


Red America: Western Front

by WulfenOne



Series: Red America [3]
Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-13
Updated: 2017-09-13
Packaged: 2018-12-27 18:59:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 48,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12087333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WulfenOne/pseuds/WulfenOne
Summary: On the other side of the Soviet-occupied USA, under orders from Jim Logan, Kitty Pryde and Jamie Madrox search for a specific helping hand in their war with the Red Army. His name is Tony Stark.





	1. Territorial Gains

"Long live the Revolution!"

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock unsheathed her long, straight blade from its scabbard and drew her small automatic machine-pistol from its holster on her hip, before scrambling out of the muddy trench that her forces had dug in the ruins of what had once been San Francisco. The rain, infrequent though it was, had turned the bottom of the trench into a soup of wet earth, blood, rats, shell casings and other assorted detritus of war. Elisabeth had been shown around the division headquarters a few blocks away, and had even been invited to stay there, but she had had her fill of pen pushing. Instead, she had chosen to lead from the front, as she felt a Commissar ought to. Now, she was preparing to storm a rebel stronghold that had taken root in what had been a substantial library, in order to break the deadlock that had apparently held here for around a month. Every attack the Soviets had made had been repulsed (which Elisabeth found astounding, considering the inferior quality of the rebels' training and weapons), but Elisabeth was determined that this one would succeed.

No matter the cost.

Running towards the library, followed by two dozen of her finest men, Elisabeth began feeling bullets whip-cracking through the air around her. She wasn't overly concerned about being hit, however – she was using her telepathic powers to throw off the rebels' aim ever so slightly, in order to appear as if she were invulnerable to their weapons. It was just as well, really, since her black greatcoat and cap marked her out significantly from the rest of her troops, and thus made her a target for any rebel eager to gather the scalp of a high-ranking Red Army soldier. Taking cover behind a large chunk of fallen masonry, Elisabeth raised her pistol, clipped on a sniper's sight and took aim carefully, ignoring the continuous rattle of weapons fire around her and picking out a man stationed at one of the library windows. He was blindly spraying bullets in all directions, as if he thought that by increasing the volume of fire he put out, he would also increase his chances of survival. Elisabeth scoffed at the notion internally, but then put that thought out of her head and firmly squeezed the trigger on her pistol. The man's head burst like a grape, brains and eyeballs splattering the window sill in front of him as his body collapsed. Elisabeth smiled grimly as the corpse started spewing the last of its lifeblood down the outer wall of the library, and unhooked a knife from her belt. Pushing up her sleeve, she gently marked another small, bloody line in her flesh, indicating her first kill for this new campaign.

 _The first of many,_  she found herself thinking, as a wide smile creased her lips for a moment or two. Alongside her, her troops were swarming towards the library, their weapons up and raining bullets on the defenders' positions. "Forward!" she howled, gesturing with her sword as if it were a conductor's baton. "Wipe the rebel scum out!" Pushing herself up from her sniping position, she raised her pistol and started pumping the trigger methodically.  _We'll have these idiots in the Alaskan labour camps before nightfall._

And then, suddenly, the reason why the library had remained free made itself shatteringly clear. One man stood outside the building, his hands stretched out in front of him with his fists clenched. Elisabeth watched as her troops prepared to cut him down – only for them to be thrown off their feet by massive tremors, as the ground seemed to ripple beneath them. Inwardly, Elisabeth cursed. She'd hoped that the rebels wouldn't have any superhumans of their own here on the West Coast – most of the United States' quota of super-powered humans seemed to be concentrated in the New York area, for which she'd been grateful on her way out here – but apparently she'd been wrong. The anonymous man stood firm as the Soviet troops counter-attacked, throwing up shields of earth to protect him from fierce weapons fire and sending more ripples of concrete and mud into the ranks of Elisabeth's soldiers.

This called for a simple, direct solution. Shouting for her adjutant Lieutenant Wagner over the din of violently shifting earth, Elisabeth pointed towards the roof of the library. "Teleport there, and dispose of the American however you see fit," she said, knowing that Lieutenant Wagner would follow her orders in as direct and concise a way as he could. Lieutenant Wagner nodded, and then vanished in a puff of acrid smoke and then reappeared a few metres over the head of the American, his body perfectly poised against the pull of gravity. As he moved towards the ground, Elisabeth saw him wrap his long, thin tail around the rebel's neck and then clench it tightly, snapping the other man's vertebrae without even trying hard. Lithely, Lieutenant Wagner dropped to the muddy street and, without missing a step, was already moving towards the now-defenceless library before his target had even hit the ground.

Elisabeth smiled wolfishly and began to advance again, her gloved fist tightening around the hilt of her sword. The air became thick with lead after the rebels' shock had faded, but Elisabeth simply let the bullets flicker past her. To her left, she saw one of her soldiers virtually explode from the inside out as he was hit low in the gut and his intestines were splattered across the ground behind him. She cursed again, and cried "Get me a medic!", causing another trooper to scurry up to her and begin binding the wounded man's torn stomach with battlefield dressings. It probably wouldn't do a lot of good, given the severity of the wound, but she wanted the soldier cared for, in any event. Perhaps, if he was very lucky, the Soviet Army's medical corps would have prepared some of the healing enzyme that she had obtained in New York, and he would be back on his feet within a few hours.

She sincerely doubted that, though, given the inefficiency of Dr MacTaggert's operations.

Leaving the soldier in the medic's care for the moment, she ran towards the doors of the library and directed some of the other soldiers to attempt to gain entry into the library. "Captain Beaubier," she began, "I want shaped charges placed against this door, timed for three seconds each." She smiled briefly. "We'll show these rebels just who they're dealing with."

The other woman nodded briefly in response. "Yes, sir. How quickly do you want it done?" she asked, redundantly.

"As soon as you can, Captain," Elisabeth replied, glancing quickly at the door, and hoping that the rebels didn't decide to stage a counter-attack. She doubted that would happen, given their numbers, but she didn't want to be caught off-guard, either. "I don't want another nasty surprise."

"Yes, sir," the other woman replied again, before she turned to one of her sergeants and directed him to fetch a demolition team. He scurried off towards to other end of the assault line and returned with two soldiers – one male, one female – laden down with explosives and detonator caps. "Lieutenant Allerdyce – Corporal Blevins," Captain Beaubier began, nodding to each of them in turn. "We need this door down. Now."

"And you'll have it, sir," the man replied, in a thick Australian accent. Elisabeth was always impressed by how many people had accepted the Soviet dream, and this was just another example of somebody discarding their capitalist ideals and joining the revolution. Lieutenant Allerdyce knelt by the door, assisted by his fellow soldier, and delicately placed several lumps of plastic explosive on the door, with detonators embedded deeply in each of them. "Best take cover, sir, unless you want to be filleted," the man said. Elisabeth thought that was excellent advice, and ducked behind the convenient cover of a chunk of fallen masonry. She watched as the man struck a single match and held it up in front of him. The woman he had brought with him stood beside him and concentrated, extending something around the two of them for a moment while he stared at the match and caused its flame to grow and expand beyond its normal limits, creating what looked like a small two-legged creature that ambled casually through the barrier the woman had made and then leapt at the explosives, detonating them and ripping the barricaded doors off their hinges.

"Now!" Elisabeth cried, and she and her troops swarmed forwards into the wrecked entrance, opening fire on the trapped defenders before closing to hand-to-hand range and using their bayonets and pistols to continue the slaughter. Elisabeth knew that the reason they were bothering to attack this enclave at all was on the upper level, so, after driving her blade deep into the gut of a middle-aged man who had attempted to bundle her to the ground, she made for the closest staircase and began climbing it as fast as she could. Two panicked rebels began shooting at her as she rounded a bend in the staircase, but since Elisabeth had sensed them before she had begun climbing, she was prepared for them. Using the same trick that she had on the battlefield outside, she threw their aim off and advanced towards them relentlessly. Raising her sword, she hacked off one of the rebels' hands at the mid-forearm and then unloaded two armour-piercing rounds into the face of the other with her pistol. As the wounded rebel lay on the stairs, blood pumping from his ruined forearm, Elisabeth casually ejected the spent clip from her gun and slapped home a new one. She took her time to do so, enjoying the sensation of sheer terror that wafted up from the crippled man's mind, and relishing the growing puddle that was spreading at the crotch of his fatigues.

"Please –" the man begged, almost sobbing. "Please don't kill me – I have a daughter –"

"Then you should have thought about her before you picked up your rifle, fool," Elisabeth replied coldly, and pressed her pistol against his temple. "But you may take comfort from the fact that she will grow up a child of the state." Then she pulled the trigger and watched the light in the man's eyes go out, his mind vanishing without a whisper as his brains decorated the stairwell in livid splashes of red and white. Pausing, Elisabeth spat contemptuously on both bodies, before she carved two more marks into her arm and then proceeded up the stairwell to the second floor. Her target was only a few steps away.

Up ahead of her, Elisabeth saw a heavy door that was carved with intricate wooden designs. She could sense her target behind it, so, after putting her fingers to her temples and feeling her telepathic powers flare to life, she took the liberty of borrowing his eyes for a moment or two, in order to get a look at what kind of barricade he had. It wasn't much – just a chest and a couple of chairs shoved up against the door – but Elisabeth still felt that she didn't want to waste any time or bullets getting through it. Frowning, she twined her psychic presence around her quarry's mind and forced him to get up from where he had been cowering.  _Let me in,_  she ordered him, and she felt him pulling the chest away from the door. When her path was clear, she put her shoulder against the heavy wood and shoved the door open wide, revealing the quarry she had been sent to capture – a lanky man clad in ragged clothes, whose messy brown hair and thick glasses were covered with dirt and dust, and who was surrounded by piles of half-finished machinery and engineering tools.

Elisabeth smiled disarmingly. "Hello, Dr Banner," she said, effortlessly slapping aside the weak punch he tried to throw at her and dropping him to the floor with a backhanded slap from her free hand. "I'm afraid your time is up."

"What are you going to do with me?" Dr Banner gasped, touching one side of his mouth with tentative fingers, trying to see if he was bleeding or not.

"Oh, now that would be telling, wouldn't it?" Elisabeth grabbed the man by his collar and pulled him to his feet. "Let's just say your research on gamma-mutation interests the Soviet Army's High Command, and they would like to…  _discuss_  it with you."

* * *

Kitty Pryde glanced up at the sky, enjoying the sensation of the sun against her face for the first time in too long a time. She hoped that the weather would hold just long enough so that she could savour it before getting down to the dirty business at hand.

"This is going to be like trying to find a needle in a metropolis," said Jamie Madrox as he stood beside her. "You know, I still don't know why we got sent out here when New York needs our help much more."

Kitty shrugged. "Logan knows best, Jamie," she said, not really believing that for a moment. The reason she had been sent out here was still fresh in her mind after weeks of cross-country travel, dodging Soviet tanks and foot patrols through a dozen cities, using every available means of stolen transport they could, and trying to make contact with the scattered rebel cells that were operating throughout the United States: rebel intelligence reports had produced evidence that not only were the Red forces going to try a major push here on the west coast, but they were also gathering up as many scientists and revolutionary thinkers as they could: Reed Richards had been taken from his teaching position in Seattle only a few months beforehand, and Daniel Rand's technology farm in Connecticut had been overrun with Soviet troops before that. What the rebel spies had learned didn't exactly point to anything specific, but the fact that all the abductees all had one thing in common – their aptitude for science and technology – didn't exactly point to anything good.

With that in mind, Logan had asked Kitty, Madrox and four other rebels to get out to San Francisco in order to protect one of his old acquaintances, a man called Tony Stark. From what Logan had told her, Kitty knew Stark to be a genius with anything mechanical –which made him just the sort of person the Soviets were likely to want to capture. Logan had warned her that Stark was a smart guy, and would probably have found a way to hide from the Soviet troops, but Kitty had laughed, and told him not to worry.

Looking at the size of the city, she thought that perhaps she'd been a little overconfident.

"Where do we start, sir?" asked one of the rebels, a short-haired blonde girl a little younger than Kitty, both of whose ears were pierced five times and who sported a nasty scar along the side of her stomach, where red-hot shrapnel from a hand-grenade had gouged a line into her skin. Another scar arced across the left half of her face, from the inner part of her ear to the edge of her lips, giving her face a perpetual half-grin. Madrox gripped her by the shoulder and nodded in the direction he was facing, towards a line of ruined buildings and large chunks of rubble.

"That way seems like a good idea, Tabby," he said. "All of you be careful, all right? This isn't exactly our home turf any more." He glanced towards the man holding the squad's precious belt-fed machine gun. "Danny, keep an eye out for trouble. If anything happens, we might need you to cover our retreat."

The young man touched two fingers to his brow in a brief salute. "Sure thing, boss – Sarah-Jane and I are good at that." He patted the barrel of his gun affectionately then, making Madrox roll his eyes.

"Someday, Mr Ketch, you and I are going to have a serious talk about you giving your gun a girl's name," he said. "That just screams 'weirdo', you know?"

Danny laughed, and leaned closer to the muzzle of his gun, murmuring "Don't worry, sweetie, he doesn't really mean it," and then began scanning the surrounding area for any signs of Soviet activity. When he was satisfied that the area was as secure as possible, he moved out ahead of the squad, keeping his gun braced and ready to fire as he did so. Following his lead, Kitty hoped that the Ivans would be too busy watching the more populated areas to worry about this particular area, but she didn't hold out too much hope of that, from the fresh appearance of the tread-marks on the muddy ground. Soviet tanks had been through here – and they'd done so recently, too.  _Guess they'll be back sooner rather than later,_  she thought sourly, and drew both of the automatic pistols from her waistband. If she was going to get ambushed, she wanted to at least be caught with a gun to hand.

"Hank, Cecilia – you guys spread out that way," Kitty said, gesturing to her two old friends to widen the rebels' line a little, so that they weren't too bunched up. Kitty had seen that doing that could be lethal: one misstep on a well-placed landmine, and an entire platoon could become mincemeat in seconds.

Hank nodded. "Good idea, Katherine," he agreed, and shifted his position about a dozen steps to the rear of the group, with Cecilia following him automatically. Ever since Hank had received that concussion, Kitty had noticed, Cecilia had stuck to him like glue.

"So when are they gonna make you a squad leader, huh?" Cecilia asked in an attempt to sound casual. "Hank and I hear that Logan and Val are real impressed with the way you've been handling yourself on missions – and you too, Jamie."

"It's up to them," Kitty replied while keeping her eyes focused on the horizon. "I never understood why they bothered trying to make Jamie a squad leader, though – he's got less leadership potential than a brick."

"Hey!" Madrox retorted as the squad came across a large derelict building that was totally open to the elements, with rats and cockroaches scurrying around inside the shattered walls. "I heard that!"

"Good. Maybe it'll give you something to work towards," Cecilia chuckled before she high-fived her husband.

"Quiet, guys," Danny hissed as he moved past the wrecked building, which got everybody else in the squad to duck behind what cover was available. "Looks like we're not the only ones who had an interest in coming here – look." He stretched out a hand and pointed towards a group of eight Russian troops who were obviously on patrol. They were laughing and cracking what Kitty assumed were jokes amongst themselves, totally oblivious to their surroundings. Fortunately, that meant that they hadn't noticed the rebel squad yet, for which she was extremely grateful.

"Okay," she said in a low voice, "they haven't seen us yet, so that means we've got the upper hand here." She held out her hands. "Everybody grab hold – I'm going to take us down into the sewer systems so that we don't have to get into any kind of firefight. The mission's too important for that."

Madrox grasped her hand, and all the other squad members took hold of one of her arms. Kitty took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and then phased, letting the six of them float gently down below ground. When she opened her eyes again, all of the squad was safely in the sewer with her.

Madrox sighed as he took stock of his new surroundings. "The more things change…"


	2. Hard As Iron

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock paced back and forth like a caged animal, while the man strapped into the metal chair in front of her spat a bright splatter of bloody spittle onto the tiled white floor. Elisabeth examined her fingernails for a moment or two before she leaned closer to the man and let him smell the light scent of rosewater that she had deliberately sprayed herself with earlier. She didn't hold with wearing perfume while in uniform under normal circumstances – she felt it compromised her image as a commanding officer – but these were definitely not normal circumstances. Besides which, Elisabeth liked to demonstrate to her captives that while she could be delicate and feminine if she wanted, she could also beat them senseless if they annoyed her.

Dr Bruce Banner was beginning to understand that. "I don't understand this! What do you  _want_  from me?" he asked again, through split lips that wept trickles of saliva and gore.

"I think we made that clear two hours ago, Doctor," Elisabeth said in a honeyed tone. "We simply want your research on gamma mutation. High Command feels that it would be helpful to our efforts to pacify this area of the country if we had troops with that kind of power." She paused, and ran her fingers down one side of his bruised face tenderly, like a lover. "Now… we can ask you for it, and you can be…  _rewarded_ … for helping us." She leaned closer and kissed him on the lips, licking away a small line of blood on his chin and looking hypnotically into his eyes. For a moment, she stayed silent, holding Dr Banner's gaze to her own effortlessly, like a cobra about to strike – and then, as he was still trying to process the kiss, she slapped him hard across the cheek, sending a spray of bright blood arcing across the room. "Or, alternatively, we can  _take_  the information, and you can rot in a labour camp for the rest of your wretched life. It's your choice, of course, but I would advise against the second option."

Dr Banner coughed, something in his throat briefly catching as he began to speak again. "Ask away. What do you want to know?" he said in a small, broken voice.

Elisabeth smiled, her Cupid's-bow lips curving upwards briefly and her eyes beginning to glow with pinkish energy. "Excellent. Now just lie back and relax, Doctor Banner – this won't take very long…"

Dr Banner's scream echoed through the corridors of the Soviet headquarters like a banshee wail.

* * *

Kitty watched the other members of her squad as they sloshed through the sewer's knee-deep water, and silently thanked her lucky stars that she could stay phased while moving underground. It wouldn't help the parts of her clothing that were already wet, of course, but she liked the idea of not getting any more water and filth on them than was absolutely necessary. She looked towards the end of the tunnel and wondered if there were any nasty surprises lurking around the next corner – she'd heard from Logan that there were alligators living in the sewers in this part of the country, which didn't worry her all that much, but she'd also had uncomfortable thoughts about a residual Soviet presence in the sewers around sensitive areas. Since she had very little idea about the layout of this city, she didn't particularly want to run into heavily-armed Russian troops defending a facility she'd never heard of, especially when she was with a group of untested rebels who she'd never seen fire so much as a single round of ammunition. It didn't exactly put her at her ease.

"Got any idea where we're going, Kit?" Madrox said, breaking her out of her private thoughts. She simply pointed down the tunnel.

"That way," she said dryly. "I figure we should leave the sewers the minute we find a manhole – I don't want to get completely lost and end up miles away from where Logan said we'd find Stark."

"I like the sound of that," Cecilia agreed, looking with disgust at a particularly bold rat as it chewed casually on a piece of rotten meat while gazing back at the humans with beady, pitch-black eyes. "I spend enough time with rats as it is."

"Hey, Cece, does Hank know you call him that?" Danny piped up, in an attempt to raise the mood. Cecilia raised an eyebrow and flipped up a middle finger.

"Laugh it up, short-stuff," she said scornfully. "Hank knows exactly what I call him, don't you, baby?" She brushed her hand down Hank's stubbly cheek, and murmured something in his ear as she did so, kissing his earlobe when she'd finished speaking.

"Oh yes – but let's not spoil it by telling these idiots, shall we?" Hank chuckled, before he nodded towards the dripping ceiling of the tunnel and continued "That looks like a manhole cover to me, Kitty. Do you want to have a look to see if the coast is clear?"

"Absolutely," Kitty said with a deep sense of relief. She had felt something slithering past her leg a few seconds beforehand, and she had had no desire to find out what it was. Getting a leg-up from Madrox, she phased her head through the steel disc that sealed the manhole, and took a look around. She couldn't see any Russian troops, which was a good thing, and she couldn't hear any vehicles either, which was an even better thing. The only matter that really concerned her was the fact that they still seemed to be in a very sparsely populated area, and that meant there was probably still a very small chance of finding the man for whom they'd come to search. From what Logan had told her, Kitty knew Tony Stark was very much a "people person", and liked to be around them as much as he could, if only to shift any suspicions about him onto others, and give him an excuse to hide confidential information and equipment in places other than his own territory. Kitty had decided that Stark being that sneaky marked him out as someone she'd like to meet, which meant that the squad's search would have to start in earnest sooner rather than later. Fortunately, however, Logan had also given her a list of Stark's favourite bars, so the search would have a few good starting points, which she was extremely relieved about. Pulling her head down through the manhole cover, Kitty said "Coast's clear. We should get moving."

Once all of the squad had cleared the manhole cover, Kitty watched as Tabby drew both of the Russian Army-issue pistols she had at her waist and chambered a round in each. "Bullets are like condoms – better to have one and not need it," she explained with a smile, the scar on her face twisting as she spoke. "It's always worked for me so far." Then she nodded towards the nearest street, which was strewn with garbage, discarded weapons, and pools of drying blood. "So are we gonna get moving, or what?"

"Sounds like a plan. Let's go, guys," Kitty said, adopting a crouch as she ran towards the safety of the nearest building. It was a fairly redundant gesture, given that there were no Soviet soldiers around, but Kitty had found that old habits died especially hard – and when she glanced back at the rest of her squad, she saw that they were having trouble shaking their old habits off, too, which made her feel slightly better. When they were all with her, Kitty silently gestured towards the next intact building, which was about fifty metres away. If they were going to get anywhere, she decided, they were going to have to go for it in manageable leaps, rather than simply tiptoeing around.

* * *

The bar was dark and dingy, but Tony Stark didn't mind that, all things considered – there was alcohol being served, and it wasn't warm or imported from Russian factories. He did, on the other hand, mind that there were several Russian soldiers warming seats around the fringes of the place, their weapons lying provocatively next to their drinks. If he was going to enjoy a drink, Tony preferred not to be looking over his shoulder all the time. The other thing that Tony minded was the entertainment; the girl who was supposedly trying to sing in the corner was apparently ignorant of basic musical tenets, and worse, seemed like the sort who thought she could sing like a goddess. Her warbling efforts screeched out over a sound system that didn't disguise anything, and Tony wondered how long it would take one of the Ivans to pull his gun and send her to a gulag for disturbing the peace. He closed his eyes and drained the glass in his hand. The whiskey burned on its way down, but Tony didn't mind. He opened his left hand and took one more look at the crumpled scrap of paper in his fingers, as if he couldn't believe it was still there. The paper was a note from his old friend Jim Logan, which had been sent through unofficial channels – the Ivans were monitoring everything these days, even the mail – and which had told him of the Soviets' plans to seize every major scientific talent in the country for their occupation effort. He'd heard of Reed Richards' kidnapping, of course, but he hadn't thought it was anything other than the usual brutal muscle-flexing on the Soviets' part. Now that he'd learned it was all part of a concerted effort, Tony had decided that he had to hide. He'd figured the bottom of a whiskey bottle was as good a place as any, but then he'd seen the Russkie uniforms begin peppering the bar as the evening wore on, and his plans to escape it all had fallen apart faster than a house of cards hit by a gust of wind. Now he was stuck, and he liked that idea even less than he liked the tuneless girl's singing. He could try to leave, of course, but then he'd really get recognised, and the game would be up even faster.

No, the best thing to do right now was keep his head down, endure the screeching, and hope none of the Russians tried to buy a lowly American a drink.

He damn near jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand suddenly land on his shoulder, like a hammer on an anvil. He swallowed, pushing his heart back down to where it ought to have been, and looked around to see who had given him such a shock.

"Hi, Tony!" said a perky, cheerful young girl whose floppy black hair framed her pretty face, who was already pushing a small note into Tony's hand. Tony allowed himself to breathe out, and then gave the girl a searing glare to make sure she knew how annoyed he was.

"Jesus, Jubilation," he said wearily. "Did you have to scare me like that?"

"No," Jubilation chuckled. "But I thought it'd be fun, so I did it anyway." She gestured to the glass in his hand. "You going to get me one of those, or what?"

"No, I'm not," Tony snapped. "I told you before – you're not ready for this kind of booze. Hell, if I had my way, you'd never have touched  _any_  kind of booze in the first place."

"Spoilsport," Jubilation said, sounding disappointed, before she called over the bartender and handed him a bundle of notes. "Guess I'll have to do it myself, then. Barkeep, I'd like a scotch on the rocks, please." She leaned over the bar then, and planted a kiss directly on the surprised bartender's lips. "And make it quick, honey – my friend and I are busy."

When the bartender had finished pouring Jubilation her drink, she nodded towards the note she had given Tony, saying "Looks like you and I are going to have company. When are they getting here?"

" _I'm_  getting company, yes," Tony began, "and if everything's gone to plan, they should already be here. Jim Logan told them to find me – and knowing Jim, he's probably given them a roadmap right to me. He's good like that."

"Really?" Jubilation said, with a degree of scepticism. Then she took a sip of her whiskey – and immediately started coughing at its strength, her eyes beginning to water as the alcohol hit the back of her throat. Tony laughed.

"Told you, kid," he said with a smile.

"Fuck you, Tony. I can handle this," Jubilation snarled at him, before she deliberately put her glass to her lips and swallowed the rest of her drink in one go. Triumphantly, she slammed the glass down on the bar. "See?" she said, obviously fighting the urge to vomit.

Tony sighed and scratched his brow with one finger. "If you haven't puked that all back up by the end of the evening, kid,  _then_  we can say you can handle that kind of drink. Until then… don't try to fool me with that hardass act. You couldn't con a blind man." Jubilation opened her mouth to reply, but then her gag reflex kicked in visibly, and Tony couldn't help but grin as she rushed off to the ladies' room with one hand clamped firmly over her mouth. As she rushed off, Tony couldn't help but laugh. He raised his glass to her fleeing form, and said "Listen to your elders, Jubilation. It's always a wise choice." Then he swigged back the last of his drink and chuckled to himself. He wondered if Logan's little rescue party would be as much fun as his sidekick, and decided that probably wasn't all that likely.

 _Pity, really,_  he found himself thinking.  _I could do with a laugh these days…_

* * *

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock cracked her knuckles one at a time as she left the interrogation cell, a cruel, satisfied smile crossing her perfect lips as she did so. She placed her cap on her head after making sure that her hair was secure in its bindings, and began marching purposefully down the corridor towards the Research area of the Soviet compound. The information she had taken from the dead, drained husk that was all that remained of Dr Bruce Banner would keep the Soviet army one step ahead of the rebel filth infesting the country – that she knew for certain. What she didn't know was how it might be implemented… but that was what the scientists imported from all areas of the country and beyond were supposedly for. She would pass it onto them, and see what developed.

Her adjutant appeared at her side suddenly, with the familiar residual tang of brimstone hanging in the air as his teleportation effect faded. "Sir, may we consider your business here concluded?" Lieutenant Wagner asked, saluting as soon as he was able to stand to attention.

"Yes, Lieutenant, you may," Elisabeth replied, returning the salute almost absently, before she pointed back towards the cell with a single fingertip. "Organise a clean-up team for that room, would you? Dr Banner was most co-operative, but his body won't move itself, I'm afraid."

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Wagner said quickly, and Elisabeth smiled as he quickly began to gather soldiers as they walked down the corridor, directing them to the room she had indicated so that her orders might be carried out as quickly as possible. Lieutenant Wagner was an obedient soldier, Elisabeth had discovered, and she wondered how long it would be before she was able to recommend him for the appropriate decoration – she felt it was only fair that he received recognition for his efforts thus far. Leaving her adjutant to finish the task she had set him, Elisabeth marched purposefully down the corridor until she came to a dead stop and then stabbed the button in the wall that would call the elevator. She had to pass on the information she had gathered as quickly as possible, or it would essentially start to gather dust in her head, and become much harder for her to access.

The elevator came to a soft halt, and Elisabeth stepped inside as its doors hissed open. Then she pushed the button that would take her down to the basement level. When the lift had stopped at its destination, Elisabeth stepped out into the sterile, white corridor beyond its doors, and headed down the hall to her left, towards the laboratory area. She swiped her coded card-key through the lab's door, and marched inside, tucking her cap underneath her right arm as she did so. When the lab's sole occupant noticed she was there, he put down his soldering iron and stepped away from his workbench. "Colonel Braddock – this is an unexpected pleasure," he began, before Elisabeth cut him off with a wave of her hand.

"We both know you loathe interruptions, Dr Pym. Don't pretend otherwise – especially to a telepath. I know when you're lying and when you're sincere more easily than you do, so let us not have any illusions that my presence here is anything but an annoyance to you, all right?" She smiled thinly, glancing at the robotic death masks that were scattered across the scientist's desk and workbench. "Believe me, if I did not have to be down here, I would never have come. I have information you might like to examine, culled from the brain of Dr Bruce Banner."

"Banner? I thought he was dead?" Pym asked curiously.

Elisabeth chuckled, her violet eyes glittering. "The reports of his demise were, shall we say, premature – but they were accurate, nonetheless. Dr Banner has just told me everything he knew about his gamma research. I would like you to help put that information into helping the Soviet war effort here in America."

Dr Pym shrugged. "I'll do my best. Do you have any notes to which I could refer?"

"No, I don't." Elisabeth tapped the side of her head then, with a single gloved fingertip. "But I have all the information you'll need in here." She reached forwards with both hands and clasped Dr Pym's temples firmly. "Just relax, Henry," she said in a soothing tone of voice as she hammered every last scrap of data into his frontal lobes with the force of a cannonball. Dr Pym's nose exploded in a torrent of blood then, and he fell to his knees panting and gasping for air.

"I'd… I'd have preferred to read the notes," he managed to splutter through the river flowing from his nostrils, which he hurriedly managed to stem slightly by holding his handkerchief to his face.

"I'm sure you would have," Elisabeth replied calmly, as she waited for him to stagger to his feet. "But time is of the essence, Dr Pym. Besides, notes can be lost or burned, or betrayed to the rebels. What I have just given you is impossible to copy without my knowledge – if you try to write it down, I will know. If you try to pass it on, I will know. If you try to put it to disk for any reason other than research, I will know. I will know, Dr Pym, and you will die." She smiled thinly. "It's that simple, really."

Dr Pym swallowed his fear, and nodded. "Yes, Colonel. I understand."

"I'm glad we had this talk, Doctor," Elisabeth replied. "Don't disappoint me."


	3. On The Sickle's Edge

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock knocked on the door of the opulent office at the Soviet forces' local division headquarters, dressed in a smartly-pressed and scrupulously-clean uniform, and heard the office's sole occupant loudly grant her entry. She marched inside, and came to a precise, parade-ground stop in front of the desk that stood close to the large window at the rear of the room, saluting with equal precision and keeping her gaze fixed and looking forwards. "At ease, Colonel," said General Von Doom, and Elisabeth visibly relaxed, removing her black cap from her head and tucking it under the arm of her greatcoat. She didn't know why she was so concerned about meeting with this sector's commanding officer (after all, given her status as a commissar, she essentially out-ranked the man, and could easily have him thrown into a cattle truck bound for Alaska at any time she chose – and besides which, she had met with General Von Doom more than a few times before, and had already gained a more than sufficient measure of the man), but she decided that she would take the initiative and enquire why she had been summoned anyway.

"You wished to see me, sir?" she asked, at which General von Doom smiled, giving Elisabeth the impression of a wolf bearing down on a day-old faun. She was long past being intimidated by the arrogant, self-important old man now, though, and so she simply returned his smile as smartly as she had returned his salute, before setting herself down into the seat facing him from across the desk.

"Yes, Colonel, I did," Doom replied, and Elisabeth tried not to take offence at his deliberate omission of her other rank, the hairs on the back of her neck beginning to stand on end in abject irritation. "I wish to hear what progress you have made with regards to your mission in this city. I have seen detailed reports from several other senior officers in pursuing their objectives, but I have yet to see one from you. Why is that, I wonder?" He smirked, as if he was used to playing this sort of game with his inferior officers before shooting them dead on the spot. "Perhaps you are too busy playing conqueror with the troops under your command to remember our real purpose here?"

"You forget yourself, General," Elisabeth retorted, momentarily losing her temper. "I might be a colonel in the Red Army, but I am also a Commissar of the Soviet Union, and you are just a soldier. A high-ranking soldier, true, but just a soldier nevertheless, and you would do well to remember the power I hold." She pulled her gun from its holster on her hip and examined the barrel with casual disinterest. "I could execute you for treason right now, and nobody outside the Politburo would be brave enough to ask me what you had said. So I would think twice before you begin calling my methods into question." She smiled thinly and slotted her pistol back into its holster, satisfied that her threat had had its desired effect. "Sir."

General Von Doom swallowed, looking suitably chastened. "Yes… of course. Do you have anything to report… Commissar?"

"Yes," Elisabeth replied simply. "Dr Banner's research into gamma mutation, coupled with the research we managed to rescue from the New York operation, ought to provide our soldiers with the edge they need to take on any number of rebels – being able to shrug off a bullet and then kill with a flick of your wrist is far too enticing a prospect for any soldier, don't you agree?"

"Yes… yes, that would be an excellent weapon," Doom said, a far-away look coming over his face for a moment, and Elisabeth could see the scenario she had just described playing itself out behind his eyes. She wasn't surprised – Doom had been a bitter cripple ever since a rebel sniper had robbed him of his legs, and she could only imagine what lengths he would be prepared to go to in order to regain their use. Injecting a cocktail of gamma-mutated healing cells would probably be amongst the least of those lengths, she thought with some well-disguised humour. As she kept a laugh suppressed, Doom shook himself out of his reverie and looked at her again. "How soon will you be able to put this into effect?" he asked.

"Dr Henry Pym is currently working out a way of meshing the two variables together in a workable fashion," Elisabeth began, "but there should be no more than a short delay before we can begin a mass-inoculation programme for our troops."

Doom's eyes almost glowed with anticipation. "Good. Good," he said. "Excellent news, Commissar-Colonel Braddock. Dismissed."

"Thank you, sir," Elisabeth said, saluting him and then turning one-hundred-and-eighty degrees on the ball of one foot so that she could march out with as much precision as she had entered, her black peaked cap placed squarely back on top of her tightly-bound blonde hair.  _Malleable as ever, aren't you?_  she thought in amusement.  _You old fool. I think that sniper must have taken more than your legs if you believe that I would waste valuable resources on you…_

* * *

Kitty pushed open the door to the bar, keeping a hand lightly on the holster of one of her pistols. She'd left her rifle outside in the alleyway with Danny and his machine gun, who had also taken the rest of the squad's larger weapons just in case. The last thing Kitty wanted to do was start a firefight in here, especially with her squad's target sitting by the bar, in full view of some drunken Russian soldiers. She could see Tony Stark hunching himself over a glass of what looked like whiskey, even from this distance – which made her smile broadly despite the Russian uniforms dotted unpleasantly around the bar's interior: Logan had told her that Stark had a fondness for strong drinks, and liked to indulge that fondness far too much. The girl beside him she didn't recognise, but that was easily rectified. She turned to Madrox and said, in a low tone, "I see Tony over there. Keep the rest of the guys happy while I go get him."

"How are you planning to do that?" Madrox said, in a way that suggested he already knew what she was going to do. "We aren't exactly out of sight here, after all."

"How am I going to get him out of here?" Kitty grinned. "I'm going to flash him. How else?"

Madrox creased his face up into a sour grimace. "I had to ask."

Kitty chuckled, then kissed Jamie on the cheek and sauntered away from him towards the bar, giving her buttocks a tantalising wiggle as she did so. Pushing past a few knots of patrons, she eased herself up to the bar and rested her elbows on the cracked wooden surface. "Hello, stranger," she said with a broad smile. "I'm Kitty. What's your name?"

"His name's Tony Stark," said the girl sitting next to him, visibly bristling at Kitty's perceived invasion of their privacy, "and he doesn't want to talk to you."

"It's okay, Jubilation, really," Stark said, raising his whiskey glass to his lips and sipping a little of the amber liquid before clearing his throat and continuing "Who am I speaking to?"

"My name's Kitty," Kitty said, holding out one hand for Stark to shake. He grasped her fingers delicately, before drawing her hand up to his lips and kissing it gently.

"Charmed," he said with a dashing smile that Kitty was sure had seduced more than one woman in its time. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"Well, I'd love to say this was a social call, but Jim Logan told me to come find you," Kitty said, cutting straight to the chase (and feeling privately gratified about Stark's very visible disappointment, to boot). "To put it simply: the Russkies can't be allowed to take you prisoner, so we're here to get you safe passage to the underground."

"How many of you are there?" Stark asked, before he nodded subtly at the bar and all the Russian soldiers inside it. "I suppose I'd be disappointed if I said I hoped there was at least a battalion's-worth?"

"You would," Kitty agreed ruefully, her eyebrows arched highly. "You've got my squad and me, and that's all. Logan thought that would be enough."

"Fucking wonderful," the girl called Jubilation snarled. "That stupid old man just signed all our death warrants. Have you seen how many Ivans there are in this bar alone?" She jerked a hand at the bar's door scornfully. "How are we supposed to survive out there?"

"By keeping quiet, doing  _exactly_  as I tell you, and not attracting any unwelcome attention," Kitty fired back smoothly. She'd dealt with characters like this girl more than once before, and she knew that you had to assert yourself right from the word go, or they'd keep on causing a nuisance until they endangered themselves or others. "Logan put a great deal of trust in me when he picked me for this mission, and I intend not to let him down. Now," and she glanced at the closer knots of Russian soldiers, "we need to figure out a way of getting you closer to the door without shooting the place up…" She pondered the point for a moment or two before she snapped her fingers excitedly. "Got it!" she exclaimed. "You guys wait here. I have a plan. When I get to that first table, you start moving towards the door, okay, and don't stop no matter what." She walked into the centre of the bar, and then let out an ear-piercing screech before collapsing heavily onto the sticky floor, a hand pressed firmly (and, she realised, rather theatrically) to her brow. As she'd predicted, the Russian Army troops were the first to see what had happened, ready to check whether or not CPR would be required on the strange American girl who had just fainted very loudly in front of them. Kitty kept one eye open as she lay on the ground, watching Stark and Jubilation moving through the crowd as fast as they could, being totally ignored by everybody else. Trying her hardest to look both extremely groggy and pleased to have the attention of so many Russian soldiers, she pushed herself up on her elbows and smiled coyly at them, fluttering her eyelashes and offering her hand to the nearest man in a Soviet uniform. "Why, thank you, comrade," she purred, leaning close to her knight in shining armour and planting a grateful kiss directly on his lips. "I don't know what I'd have done without you." She hugged him then, looking over his shoulder and watching Jubilation and Stark quickly skirting the edge of the bar, towards the spot where her squad was waiting for them. When she saw that they were all safely out of the bar, she disengaged herself from the soldier and winked at him one last time before moving towards the door herself. She didn't get more than two paces before the man touched her gently on the arm.

"Wait," he said in a thickly Russian-accented tone, his brown eyes sparking with genuine concern. "Are you all right now, Miss?"

"Yes, thank you," she said, keeping a broad smile on her face even though she really wanted to leave as quickly as possible. "I think I'd better get home so I can have a lie down, though. Although if you want to thank me properly, soldier… you can call me later." She found a scrap of paper and scrawled a random string of numbers onto it, before she slid it into the soldier's breast pocket, winked at him and sauntered casually out of the bar.

"If you ask for a threesome with that guy, Kit," Madrox said as soon as she emerged into the cold night air, "remember who you're sleeping with, okay?" As if to emphasise his point, he slapped a hand against the wall of the bar, and another Madrox popped into existence beside him. "See? We're a living orgy," the Madroxes said in unison. "Can't beat that, can you?"

"Don't flatter yourself, Jamie," Kitty snorted contemptuously, taking her rifle back from Danny, who had already handed out the rest of the squad's weapons. "I wouldn't want a threesome with a Russkie anyway – or another guy, for that matter." She blew a kiss at Tabby, enjoying the way that both Madroxes' eyes boggled out of their skulls. "Now let's get out of here before those guys realise that anything's wrong."

"Good plan," Stark agreed. "I've got a safe-house a couple of blocks away. We should be safe there for the night, but I don't think it's wise to stay here any longer than we have to."

Kitty nodded, before she nodded towards the nearest manhole cover. "Okay – but we'll have to use the sewers to get there for now. Jamie, you take point. Danny and Hank, you hang back and cover Tony and Jubilation. Cece, Tabby, you're with me. Now let's get out of here…"

* * *

"Dr Pym," Elisabeth said as she entered his laboratory. "I trust you have some good news for me?"

"Not yet, but I will do shortly," Dr Pym replied, gesturing towards the work-surface behind him, which was strewn with empty test-tubes, bloodstained microscope slides, and a few quietly bubbling beakers. "The two samples are reaching a critical stage – without this precise synchronisation, the experiment will fail. I can't simply throw them into a beaker and expect them to sit quietly while I stir them together." He gestured at the containers of oozing, necrotic black slime that sat in the sink to his left, awaiting orderly disposal. "The results have to be watched closely, or they turn into… well, they turn into that."

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow. "I see." She crossed the room to where the table stood, and picked up a half-filled syringe, putting her thumb on the plunger and pushing out a small trickle of the bloody fluid inside. "How soon can you deliver a workable test sample?"

"Within the next forty-eight hours at the most," Dr Pym said, shaking the nearest beaker gently and watching the bubbling contents spit a little. "The first of the test subjects can be sent down here shortly, though – I'll need to brief them at length on what they're testing before I do anything else."

"You'll have them, then, Doctor," Elisabeth said, tapping her chin with a gloved hand before she left the laboratory and began marching down the corridor. She was confident that she could draw a few volunteers from the local Soviet garrison – or failing that, she could always take a few prisoners from the local gulag and have them pumped full of the experimental serum. Either way, she was going to have her superhuman soldiers soon, and that thought amused her a great deal.  _Lieutenant Wagner,_  she thought sharply.  _Attend me._

A sulphurous cloud erupted next to her as her adjutant popped out of thin air, before he brought his hunched, demonic form to attention and saluted her with one of his two-fingered hands. Elisabeth had to admit that had he not been such a superb soldier, she probably would not have socialised very much with this freakish creature. "You called, Comrade-Colonel?" Lieutenant Wagner said in a voice that told her he was very eager to please.

"Yes. I wish you to organise a group of test-subjects for me," Elisabeth said. "Dr Pym will need them to assemble here at headquarters for a briefing at 0700 tomorrow morning – I want them to be here with no excuses. Any stragglers are to be shot for desertion, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir," Lieutenant Wagner said, and then he paused. "Is there anything else, sir?"

Elisabeth pondered the point for a moment, before she nodded. "Actually, yes, there is – I want a progress report on the capture of Tony Stark. I believe we are still missing him from our collection of captured Yankee scientists, are we not?"

"We are, sir," Lieutenant Wagner replied nervously. "What… what do you wish me to do?"

"Interrogate Dr Richards to try to discover where we might find Mr Stark. I think somebody as intelligent as Reed Richards ought to know where one of his colleagues is hiding, don't you?" Elisabeth said, before a cruel smile spread across her lips. "Tell him we will leave his wife and son alone if he talks. I always find blackmail helps to loosen tongues." She nodded towards the door at the end of the passageway. "Dismissed."

"Yes, sir. At once," Lieutenant Wagner agreed, snapping to attention and saluting before disappearing into another cloud of purple, foul-smelling smoke. Elisabeth didn't wait for the cloud to dissolve before she began marching again. She had another meeting to attend to with General Von Doom, and she had no desire to keep this news from him. His earlier insults still rankled at her, and she wanted to make sure he ate those words again –  _without_  having to drag him out from behind his desk and sending him to Siberia in order to do that. Quite aside from anything else, the paperwork involved was horrendous, and Elisabeth hated signing piles of forms. She'd had enough of that in New York.

No, this way was  _much_  more satisfying…

* * *

Like always, the cold was what struck him first. The chill of the refrigeration chamber was accentuated by the glutinous hibernation fluid that clung to his skin, making him shiver unreservedly. He looked around through eyes turned to slits by the bright lights trained on the door of his metal cocoon, and realised suddenly that he didn't recognise this place. He hadn't been here the last time he'd gone "on ice", and the unfamiliarity of the room made him uncomfortable – which he hated, since he didn't like to acknowledge any personal weaknesses on his part. After what seemed like an eternity, his eyes adjusted to the light, and he was able to make out a black-coated figure standing in front of him with its hands clasped behind its back.

"Where am I?" he growled through chattering teeth. "What's going on?"

The figure held up a hand. "All in good time, Crimson Commando."

"Don't call me that," he snapped. "I have a name, you know. Mind using it?"

The figure stepped forwards into the light, and he was able to pick out the sneering features of a red-haired man. "I have a name, too, Crimson Commando: Captain Cortez, or 'sir' – whichever you prefer."

He ground his teeth. "Fine. Mind using my name…  _sir_?"

"That's better." Captain Cortez leaned close to him and smiled. "Welcome back to the land of the living, Clint Barton. We have a mission for you…"


	4. Crimson Spear

Clint Barton put his feet up on the desk in front of him, enjoying the tremor of disgust that rippled across the face of the officer in front of him in the process, and casually started inspecting the sniper rifle in front of him. It was of a different, heavier calibre to the usual Red Army model, with increased muffling on the barrel, a longer-range sight, and a lightweight plastic grip, rather than the heavier wooden stock that was usually used on weapons like this. Scratched into the handle with the point of a scrupulously sharpened and re-sharpened combat knife was a brief message of ownership, along with a small skull and crossbones motif. Turning the rifle over and over in his hands, examining every tiny nick and chip taken out of the weapon over his five fragmented years of service in this particular role, he tried not to pay any attention to the man who had pulled him out of hibernation this time. The idiot was starting to get on his nerves – and worse, was totally unaware that he was doing so, garbling away about things which were of no consequence whatsoever, which Clint considered the height of bad manners. He briefly considered cutting out the guy's tongue and shoving it down his throat in order to get him to shut up, but then decided that he didn't particularly want to go back into storage so soon after he'd been thawed out in the first place (it was tough enough adjusting when there were lengthy periods between going into and coming out of his icebox, after all) and that there might well be some small nugget of information hidden away somewhere in the middle of the guy's verbal diarrhoea.

Clint doubted that sincerely, but he supposed he had better persevere anyway. Flexing the gloved fingers on his right hand and scratching at his cheek briefly with the other, he lifted his feet off the table, set them flat on the floor, and then leant forward in his chair, doing his best to look interested. He was well-aware that he was no indispensable hero of the Revolution, like the late Omega Red, and that he could just as easily be replaced in his role as Crimson Commando by another rank-and-file soldier, so he supposed he had better try to stave off that prospect for at least another day. "Not that I don't appreciate the background knowledge," he began, with the appropriate mix of deference and curiosity, "but what exactly are my orders, sir?"

Captain Cortez smiled, taking off his officer's cap and laying it on the desk in front of him with one hand. Then he reached into the inside pocket of his greatcoat and drew out a thin white envelope that was marked with an "Eyes only" motif, before he handed it to Clint with a clipped gesture. "Here," he replied. "This should explain everything." Intrigued, Clint opened it, tossing aside the empty paper as soon as he could, and scanned the letter inside. His eyes widened as he finished, almost unwilling to believe that his orders were genuine. Stunned, he handed the letter back to Captain Cortez without saying a word. Cortez smirked then, evidently amused that Clint's bull-headed bravado had been strangled into silence, and set about igniting one corner of the letter with a quick burst of flame from a lighter. When it was thoroughly alight, he threw it into a nearby steel waste-paper bin and watched it burn itself out. "Happy?" he said when it was nothing more than embers, enjoying the fact that Clint was quite obviously the opposite. When Clint failed to reply, he frowned, his face twisting with barely-controlled annoyance, and stabbed at the desk's surface with two fingertips. "I asked you a question, Crimson Commando. Are you happy?"

"Yes," Clint said at last. "Permission to speak freely, sir?"

"Go ahead," Cortez replied, folding his arms across his chest. "Speak your mind."

"I don't understand why this person is the target, sir," Clint said. "From what I hear, Commissar-Colonel Braddock is one of our best officers."

Cortez's smile chilled even Clint to the bone. "She is. But let us just say that there are some in the Red Army who are dissatisfied with her intrusions into their personal business, and wish for her interference to be… ended."

"But… the Kremlin can't have authorised this," Clint persisted. "It wouldn't make any sense."

"Don't concern yourself with that," Cortez said in a clipped tone. "You're just here to pull the trigger, nothing more." He produced a small sheet of paper, which was folded in three places and marked with a multitude of official symbols, and placed it flat on the desk. Tapping it with one finger, he continued "This is an itinerary of Commissar-Colonel Braddock's planned movements over the next fortnight. Familiarise yourself with it, and decide for yourself what your best opportunity for success will be. Oh, and one more thing, Crimson Commando…" Cortez paused then, rummaging through another pocket before throwing a small device which was attached to an elastic band onto the table. "You may want to wear that – it's a portable psychic dampening field which will render you invisible to her telepathic abilities. It's not foolproof, of course, but it's better than nothing." He stepped back, saluted, and said "Long live the Revolution," before he turned on one heel, placed his cap on his head, and marched out of the room.

"Long live the Revolution," Clint whispered, still unsure if he really believed what he had just heard. He picked up his rifle again, beginning to turn it over in his hands once more, running over the faded cracks and kill-marks as if the familiar motion could somehow erase the confusion he felt over what he had just been told to do.

* * *

Kitty blinked herself blearily awake as the first faltering rays of daylight began to trickle through the blacked-out windows of the room she had slept in. Tony Stark's safe-house had proven to be exactly that – no Soviet patrols had even noticed anything suspicious about the ramshackle old apartment building. The fact that it was so very  _ordinary_  made it an ideal hide-out, at least for a night or two. She sat up, rubbed at her face and back with both hands, and then leaned over and kissed Madrox delicately on the mouth, startling him into full consciousness.

"Hey, sleepyhead," she said, stroking his cheek. "Good morning."

Madrox grunted something almost inaudible about it being a good morning right up until the instant she had woken him up, and then touched Kitty's face lightly with his fingertips, stroking her boyishly-cut hair as if he was afraid she might go intangible on him at any moment. He stayed in that position for a second or two, before slipping his arms around her and drawing her closer to him. "I love you, Kitty," he whispered into her ear, all his grouchy sentiments abruptly forgotten. Kitty drew back, amazed, her breath almost physically catching in her throat. Madrox had never been one for so openly expressing his emotions; usually they were well and truly hidden behind a thick screen of goofy, juvenile humour, so she was doubly surprised to hear him say something in that candid a fashion.

"I… I love you too, Jamie," she said in return – because, in truth, she knew that she  _did_  love him, despite all his faults (and her better judgement, she supposed), "with all my heart."

"You mean that?" Madrox replied, his eyebrows raised, as if he couldn't believe what he had just heard.

"I mean it." Kitty touched Madrox's face then, gently tracing the line of his jaw with two fingertips, feeling the roughness of two days' growth of stubble beneath them, before she kissed him again. "How could I not? I'm a really bad liar."

Suddenly, there came a polite cough from off to Kitty's right, causing both Kitty and Madrox to almost jump out of their skins. The two of them turned to face the owner of the voice, who was leaning casually against the wooden doorframe. "I hate to interrupt," Tony Stark began, smiling wryly, "but shouldn't we get moving again?" Kitty nodded hurriedly, feeling a hot blush flooding up from her neckline towards her cheeks. She stood, running her hands through her hair and checking that all her gear was still where she had left it the night before. Then she picked up her rifle and racked the slide, punching a round into the chamber with the reassuring sound of metal on polished metal.

"Sure," she said. "Why not?"

She and Madrox followed Stark downstairs to the main room on the ground floor, where Cecilia, Hank, Danny, and Tabby were waiting, along with the girl Tony had introduced as Jubilation – who wasn't doing anything else but standing sulkily off to one side with her arms folded, and a scowl almost nailed to her face.  _Doesn't exactly live up to her name,_  Kitty thought, feeling amused despite herself.

"Nice of you two to finally join us," Danny chuckled, cradling his machine gun against his left shoulder. "Finally got tired of fucking each other's brains out, huh?"

"Laugh it up all you like, Danny-boy," Madrox shot back, "but at least my girlfriend doesn't need to be coated with gun oil every night."

"Not unless I ask nicely, anyway," Kitty added, winking at Danny and blowing him a kiss. Then she cleared her throat, frowned, and continued "Okay, guys, time to get serious. We've got our target – good to see you, Mr Stark – but we still have to get out of this town in one piece. The Ivans are going to be looking for Tony here even harder than they were before, so we're going to need to be even more incognito coming out than we were going in. That means absolutely  _no_  firefights unless we have no other choice. Logan told me that himself."

"Anyone ever tell you you're no fun, Kitty?" Cecilia chuckled. "The Ivans are always spoiling for a fight – can't we oblige them just the once?"

Kitty shook her head. "No. If we have another option, we have to take it: Tony's too important to them for us to risk letting him get captured," Pausing, she reached into her pocket for a cigarette, putting it into the corner of her mouth before flicking her lighter on and making the end glow orange in the low light. "Besides, I haven't had a good smoke for hours. I don't want to have to give that up just so you can go in blasting everything in sight."

"Is that right?" Cecilia shook her head in disappointment. "You know, those things'll kill ya."

"Yeah, but I can give these up a lot more easily than I can get over a bullet in the face," Kitty retorted, blowing a thin stream of smoke into the air. "Given the choice, I know which one I'd pick… so let's do what Logan suggested, okay?"

"Then perhaps we should start now," Hank said suddenly, gesturing out of the window with a nod. He beckoned the rest of the squad over to the window and pointed off towards his right. Kitty craned her neck to see what he had seen, and her eyes widened. Marching along the street towards the derelict building were hundreds of Soviet soldiers, complete with motorised support made up of armoured halftracks, jeeps and tanks. They were still far enough away that the sounds of their movements were virtually silent, but she knew that Hank's eyes were sharper than anybody else in her team, apart from perhaps Danny, and he would be able to pick out greater detail. She swallowed her fear, took a deep breath, and tugged her shirt down a little to try and slow her suddenly-pounding heartbeat. She had only seen this kind of build-up once before; her move to New York had begun with this kind of show of force by the Russkies, and their idea of "urban pacification" had apparently been to flatten the neighbourhood and kill virtually everyone within it. Kitty felt her gorge rise at the memory of the giant metal man who had smashed a hole in her rebel cell's headquarters and turned virtually everyone inside it into red paste. If that was going to happen here, she wanted to be as far away from it as possible.

"We need to get into the sewers," she said hurriedly, "and we need to do it quickly. Everybody grab hold of me." Booming sounds of artillery fire started echoing out towards the team, and Kitty knew that the neighbourhood was effectively doomed. Pieces of plaster started to rain from the ceiling as the vibrations got closer and closer. Looking over at her two new charges, Kitty noticed that both Stark and Jubilation seemed confused as to what was going on – while the rest of the squad had a hold of any part of Kitty's body that would enable them to hang on, the two of them were still standing apart, glancing towards the sounds of the approaching Red Army. "Just do it! We don't have time for this!" she snapped. Reluctantly, Jubilation and Stark took hold of Kitty, Stark picking her left hand and Jubilation her right, and so Kitty took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and dropped them all through the floor as quickly as she could.

 _I should just rent a tunnel out down here,_  she thought acidly, as the stench of the sewer spilt into her nostrils like an expanding puddle of toxic waste. She opened her eyes and took a look down the tunnel, seeing the same drab, colourless walls that she had left behind the day before. She grimaced, and then spat into the filth at her feet. "Looks like your safe-house isn't so safe any more," she said, raising an eyebrow at Stark as she did so. "Come on. We'd better get moving before they start sending people down here, too." She turned on one heel and started padding down the tunnel, sending ripples through the filmy, viscous water around her boots.

"How can you be so sure they'll do that?" Stark asked, breathing hard as he struggled to keep up with the squad's brisk pace. "Why would they send soldiers into the sewers?"

"They know rebels have strongholds down here, so they'll send detachments of troops into the sewers to clean them out. I've seen it happen before," Kitty said simply. "Trust me on this one; you don't want to be here when they do arrive." A thought struck her then, a rare nugget of amusement presenting itself as it did so. "You ever hear of a guy called Omega Red?"

"Here it comes…" Hank chuckled.

"Sure," Stark replied, shrugging. "Everybody's heard of Omega Red."

"Well, Madrox and I saw him in the sewers in New York. He was there to kill everything he could find, and he almost killed us, too." She glanced over at Madrox. "But we showed him, didn't we, honey?"

"Oh, yeah. Absolutely," Madrox chuckled, before aiming his gaze straight at Jubilation. "You ever wonder why you never see that guy on the news any more, kid? It's because he's dead. We killed him, Kitty and me."

Jubilation's eyes bulged. "You're shittin' me," she said, stunned.

"Oh, I'm afraid they're not," Cecilia chuckled. "Every new person they meet, they can't go five minutes before they start up with the 'we killed Omega fucking Red' crap. It's like they can't let go of their fifteen minutes of fame…"

"I'd like to see you match that, Cece," Kitty retorted, with a grin. Suddenly, booming sounds came from the north-east end of the tunnel, which were almost certainly demolition charges being set off, and Kitty felt her jaw tightening involuntarily. "You see what I was talking about?" she said. "We need to go. Now." She nodded towards the source of the booms. "Or those Russkie bastards will catch us and put a bullet in the back of our heads – just being down here right now is asking for trouble…"

* * *

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock twisted her face into a thoughtful smile as the razor-sharp scalpel in her right hand sketched thin, curving lines of bright red blood into the well-toned belly of the virtually-naked, screaming woman lying strapped to a table in front of her. Interrogation was a lost art, she had decided, and so she was keen to try to resurrect it with as much practice and skill as she could muster; of course, if she had to fall back on her telepathic powers, so be it, but she wanted to try this method first. Across the room, secured to the wall by steel manacles and begging for Elisabeth to stop turning his wife's skin into a scarlet canvas was the woman's husband, Dr. Reed Richards. Elisabeth knew Richards was a confidant of Tony Stark – as scientists, they had often had cause to cross paths in many different contexts – and she also knew that Richards' Achilles' heel was his wife Sue. She turned back towards Dr. Richards, set the dripping scalpel down on the tray beside her and folded her arms, kicking one leg over the other while she regarded the American with a mixture of curiosity and scorn.

"So, Dr. Richards, do you feel ready to talk to me yet?" she sneered lasciviously. "Where is Tony Stark?"

Dr. Richards' tear-streaked face wilted like a dead flower, and he looked down at the floor, shaking his head and sobbing. "I can't… don't make me tell you that –"

Elisabeth shrugged and picked up her scalpel – and then proceeded to forcibly drive its point right down into the centre of Susan Richards' stomach, making the woman's screams echo even more loudly through the small interrogation room. "Oh, I think you  _can_ , Dr. Richards," she said in a liquid-nitrogen tone, yanking the meticulously-sharpened blade out in one swift, careless motion and making Susan howl in agony once again. "Do not try my patience much further, scum, or I can guarantee your lovely wife  _will_  pay the price for your intransigence." She raised her bare left hand to her lips and traced her tongue along the ends of her fingers, savouring the metallic iron tang of the other woman's blood as if it were a fine wine. "On the other hand," she continued, "if you speak now, I can guarantee surgery and medical treatment for her: Soviet science is good enough to ensure that she lives. It's your choice, of course, but I warn you not to underestimate me."

"For God's sake, Reed, don't do it," Susan moaned, spitting blood and drool down her ruined chin. "For God's sake –"

Elisabeth turned swiftly on one heel and leaned down to look her prisoner in her bloodshot eyes, letting the scalpel rest on the lacerated skin of her captive's chest and giving the bloodied woman a thin smile. "Nobility is a quality to be commended, but in this instance, I assure you it will get you precisely nowhere, Mrs Richards. I can guarantee that both you and your husband will not leave here until I get my answer – so I suggest you let Reed give me what I want. Is that really so hard?"

"Go to hell, you Russkie bitch," Susan Richards spat, before she was racked by a coughing fit, flecking her cheeks with more bright speckles of her own blood in the process. "Reed, don't tell her anything."

Reed Richards shook his head. "I'm sorry, Susan. I'm so sorry," he whispered, sounding as broken as if he had been lifted up and brought down across Elisabeth's knee. "You want to know where Tony Stark is? I'll tell you whatever you want to know."

Elisabeth pulled one side of her mouth up in satisfaction. Evidently using torture did have its place in extracting information after all… "Good," she said, laying the scalpel down into the sterilised kidney bowl on the table next to her chair. "Start talking. I'll tell you when you can stop." She sat back in her chair, folded her arms, and listened as Dr. Richards reeled off a list of Tony Stark's main hideouts and recreational venues throughout the city, adding a good number of new names to the already-extensive list of rebel staging posts. Elisabeth listened further as Dr. Richards told her about Tony Stark's secret plans to outfit the rebels in San Francisco with a technological advantage far outstripping the equipment with which they already had to operate. She made a mental note to suggest the "man of iron" idea to her own scientists, thinking that superhuman soldiers (like those that Dr. Pym would soon be creating) backed up by men clad in what amounted to walking tanks would be an unstoppable force – and with no obvious immovable objects on the rebel side, their annoying resistance would soon be crushed forever. Elisabeth found it hard to suppress a wide smile at that notion; soon this part of the United States would be stomped into the dirt beneath her bootheel, and annoying dinosaurs like General Victor Von Doom would be forced to acknowledge her achievement. She listened as Dr. Richards spilled his guts over everything and anything related to Tony Stark, and then she clicked her fingers. Immediately, Lieutenant Wagner and two other soldiers entered the interrogation chamber and began to move Susan Richards from her manacles to a stretcher. She tried feebly to resist, but she had lost so much blood already that it was a futile gesture. Dr. Richards, meanwhile, sat and looked at his hands, and Elisabeth could feel the sour self-hatred that was oozing off his frontal lobes. She reached out and laid a gloved hand on his shoulder, offering him a disarming smile. "She'll be fine now, Reed. You've done well." She nodded to one of the soldiers, who pulled Dr. Richards up by his collar and started to drag him out of the room. "Take care of them," she said in a clipped tone. Lieutenant Wagner saluted and ushered his two charges into the corridor, Reed Richards stumbling vacantly alongside the soldiers as they carried his wife away on a wheeled gurney.

 _Make sure they are well looked-after,_  Elisabeth sent to Lieutenant Wagner as a post-script to her order.  _I do not want them harmed any further._

 _Yes, sir,_  came back Lieutenant Wagner's thoughts.  _Where should I send them after they have been to the infirmary?_

 _Take Dr Richards to the labs, and take Mrs Richards to be recycled,_  Elisabeth said.  _We can get useful labour out of both of them yet._

 _Yes, sir,_  Lieutenant Wagner said again, and then Elisabeth cut the connection with a single thought, leaving her alone in the room once more, the bloodstains on the floor and on the walls all that was left of her information-gathering session. She sat back in her chair for a second and then got to her feet, her meticulously-shined boots ringing on the tiled floor as she turned on her heel and left the chamber behind her. As she walked, she searched for and found a group of soldiers telepathically, and then ordered them to form a clean-up detail; she knew that General Von Doom had a dedication to cleanliness that often bordered on the obsessive, and she wanted to avoid being hauled in front of him purely for forgetting to clean a few specks of dirt off a wall. She marched down the corridor, her fists clenched and her gait perfectly balanced, and then found her way to the elevator that would take her back up to ground level. She tapped the button that would take her to her destination, and leaned back against the side wall, exhaling loudly as she did so and pulling her hair out of its bonds for a moment or two, shaking its long blonde tresses free and letting them fall about her shoulders in waves of bright sunlight. It felt good to unfetter herself like this from time to time, before she was inevitably forced to adhere to military dress code again, so Elisabeth always liked to take advantage of any quieter moments she managed to find. As the elevator hissed to a stop, she tied her hair back into a ponytail and walked out into the corridor. To her left she saw the glass door of Dr Pym's laboratory, which had biohazard symbols and neat Russian script emblazoned across it. She sauntered towards the keypad set into the wall, tapping her authorisation code into it with nimble fingers and making the door whisper open. Dr Pym glanced up from his workbench then, and Betsy felt the delicious taste of his unbidden fear wafting off his mind's outer edges.

"Hello, Dr Pym," she said. "How are my test subjects today?"

"See for yourself," Dr Pym said sourly, nodding towards two black vinyl body-bags which were each neatly stencilled with their occupants' names, ranks and serial numbers. "I lost two of the test subjects in the first hour: their bodies were just eaten away by the enzymes of the combined serum. It's as if they were healing too fast, almost like they had cancerous tissue in every part of their bodies at once."

"And the other three? What happened to them?" Elisabeth asked, and Dr Pym pointed towards a couple of beds that were precisely lined up against the far wall of the laboratory. One was occupied by a bloated mass of a man, his face and body expanded to almost three times their natural size, unpleasant black warts and purple bruises peppering his jaundiced flesh, and the other was filled by a scrawny, skeletal thing that might once have been a human being, but was now just a sack of skin stretched over a pile of snapped bones. Both of them had breathing masks fastened to their faces as they wheezed and drooled bloody phlegm, viscous yellow tears carving crusted furrows down their cheeks, and both of them had heart rates that were far below what they ought to have been, according to the monitors that they were hooked up to.

"These two are dead already," Dr Pym said sadly. "All I can do is make them comfortable until the inevitable happens. Apparently the combination of the two components needs to be absolutely perfect, or nothing will work."

Elisabeth cocked an eyebrow. "There are only two men here, Doctor. Where is the last soldier I sent you?" As if on cue, a door hissed open in one of the side walls, and a young woman in a Red Army uniform stepped out, flexing her knuckles and grinning broadly. Her long brown hair was hanging loose around her shoulders and her body was quite clearly sleekly muscled underneath the uniform. Her green eyes flashed with something that Elisabeth would have identified as hunger, but the young woman didn't seem to be that ill-fed. Dr Pym's sad expression changed to one of pure, unadulterated satisfaction then, and Elisabeth had to give him credit for keeping her waiting this long. Theatricality was not something Henry Pym had ever been known for, so this was a pleasant surprise.

The young woman clicked her heels together smartly and gave Elisabeth a crisp, parade-ground standard salute, at which Dr Pym smiled with undisguised pride. "Colonel, may I introduce Corporal Jennifer Walters," he said. "She was the only subject to take the new Version 2B of the combined serum, and she seems to have adapted perfectly to it." He smiled again, and then reached out for one of his beakers before crushing it with one hand, the shattered fragments jamming themselves into his flesh and spilling his blood onto his workbench. He gasped in pain, but before Elisabeth could demand what he thought he was doing, she saw that his hand was knitting itself back together, chunks of shattered glass clattering to the ground as his hand closed up. "I tested the serum on one of my assistants, with the same results," he said, grinning, and Elisabeth was sure she saw flecks of neon green in his previously completely brown irises. "Then I tested it on myself. Everything turned out the same way. We can begin mass-production at your discretion."

Elisabeth laughed. Today was looking better all the time…


	5. Nuclear Winter

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock walked through the corridors of the Soviet headquarters, absently saluting the junior officers who passed by her and dictating some notes to Lieutenant Wagner, who trotted along beside her eagerly, a pen and paper clutched in his strangely-formed hands. Elisabeth was on her way to the main research laboratory, to which Dr Pym had relocated after his breakthrough in his own private research, where she was reliably informed that more trials were underway. As encouraging as that notion was, she did not relish the thought of more people having control of this knowledge – given the choice, she probably would have preferred to keep the facts confidential until everything was confirmed. She was certainly not looking forward to that old fool General Von Doom learning of her discovery and wheeling his useless, withered body down to the lab, in the hope of somehow throwing off his disability and closing his iron fist on the command structure again, as he had when he had been able to walk. He still controlled the Soviet operations on the west coast, true, but the respect of the troops was directed more towards his subordinates, and less towards the broken figurehead who passed them their orders. Elisabeth knew that that fact needled at the old man greatly, and for that reason alone she knew she had to watch him like a hawk. She didn't need him interfering in her affairs more than he already had.

She sighed and rubbed the bridge of her nose with two fingers. She needed some tea, she decided – when she was finished in the lab, she would see if she could find the time to make a cup or two in her own private office. Picking up her march again, she clenched her fists inside her gloves and increased her pace a little. The more quickly this was over and done with, the more quickly she could enjoy some Earl Grey. The thought of drinking some decent tea instead of the mass-produced slop that most of the Red Army had to pass off as coffee made a small smile play across Elisabeth's lips.

The smile died instantly when she opened the door to the laboratory and was greeted with the sight of General Von Doom glaring back at her – at her own eye level. His chair was sitting off to one side, empty, and he was standing on two feet, without any leg-braces, sticks, crutches or anything that would have indicated he was still a cripple.

She was too late.

"Hello, Comrade Braddock. I'm very glad to see your research has paid off," Doom said with a small, cruel smile of his own, as the two of them exchanged stiff, perfunctory salutes. "I'd almost forgotten how beautiful the view was from this height." He paused, and then nodded towards the main area of the laboratory. "I believe Dr Pym would like some words with you. You had better not keep him waiting."

"Yes, General," Elisabeth replied, gritting her teeth. Her job had just got a lot harder, and she wasn't looking forward to the extra trouble in the slightest. "Of… course." She felt her fingers twitch a little inside her gloves, almost begging her to let them pull her pistol out of its holster and put a bullet straight between the General's eyes. Closing her fists tightly, feeling her knuckles ache as she swallowed her palpable disgust, Elisabeth stalked away from the jubilant old man and towards the area where Henry Pym was working. It was a large open space filled with several dozen soldiers arranged in pairs, all engaged in hand to hand combat with each other. She could see the astonishing benefits of the serum that they had been dosed with, as each trooper was able to take devastating blows and keep coming back for more. Cuts opened on bare skin as combat knives whispered across arms, legs, chests and faces, blood spraying in all directions, but the wounds were transitional, zipping themselves closed in mere instants. Too, Elisabeth could have sworn that she was hearing more animalistic sounds than she would have expected on such a practice ground, the snarls and whoops she could make out almost sounding like jackals on a carcass instead of trained soldiers. Off to one side, she could see Henry Pym hurriedly scribbling out page after page of notes as he recorded the performance of what was hopefully to be the Russian Army's new vanguard, a look of intense pride on his usually impassive features. He noticed Elisabeth standing to his right after a few moments, cleared his throat, and then put his clipboard down on a table next to him.

"Ah, Comrade Braddock," he said, with a small smile, before gesturing expansively at the men around him. "Don't you think our research is paying off?"

"Clearly," Elisabeth replied with a sour tone in her voice, before she stepped closer to him and lowered her voice to a hiss, viciously pounding a fingertip right into Dr Pym's chest. "What the hell did you think you were doing giving General Doom that serum? Do you realise what you've done? That dated old man will ruin everything I've tried to set in motion here!"

Dr Pym took a step backwards, holding his hands up in front of him defensively. "He came down here with a whole detachment of armed troops. What was I supposed to do? Refuse him?" He shook his head. "I have no desire to be shipped off to Alaska for refusing a direct order from the regional commander of the Red Army, thank you very much."

"You could still be sent there for disobeying a direct order from me," Elisabeth snarled, black fire sparking menacingly in her violet eyes. "I am a commissar of the Soviet Union, and as such I outrank that walking relic. I told you not to let him in here, and you did. I ordered you to make sure that he did not lay his hands on the serum, and you did. One more failure, Dr Pym, and I would have put a bullet through your skull without hesitation. Believe me, I've killed men for less – so you may count yourself  _extremely_  lucky." She narrowed her eyes. "Do not fail me again, please. I'd hate to lose a good scientist, after all." To underline her point, she backhanded the doctor across the face, knocking him to his knees and sending his reading glasses flying. "Am I making myself clear?"

"Yes, Commissar," Dr Pym replied, sniffing back a small trickle of blood and placing his glasses back on the bridge of his nose, before pushing himself back to his feet and smoothing out his lab coat. "Very clear."

Elisabeth gave him a crooked smile. "Good," she purred. Readjusting her cap's position on her head, she turned swiftly on one heel and began walking away from Dr Pym with a focused air in her step. "Now, if you'll excuse me, Comrade Pym, I need to check our progress with regard to locating Tony Stark. I'm sure the General will want details on that before too long. More's the pity."

 _Perhaps that will give me better news,_  she wondered absently as she stormed off, her fists clenched so tightly that her fingers felt starved of blood.

* * *

 

"Jesus Christ," Kitty breathed in awe, as she took in the incredible sight in front of her. "How long did it take you to scrounge together enough stuff to build this thing?"

"Years," Tony Stark replied, shrugging as if that was nothing special. "Jubilation and I had to steal so much equipment and materials from the Reds that they're probably still counting their losses."

Jubilation chuckled. "Yeah, we were a real pair of Robin Hoods. It was fun, huh, Tony?"

"That's one word for it, I guess," Tony agreed, with a shrug.

In front of the group of rebels and their two guests stood what could only be described as a miracle. It was eight feet of gleaming steel, splattered with fractured Cyrillic script here and there (scavenged armour plate from old Soviet tanks covered most of the thing's body), and covered with hydraulic pumps that looked like they had been torn from the insides of old brake units. The legs of the thing were huge and brutal chunks of metal, the boots on the end of the limbs measuring about a foot from toe to heel, and the arms were on a similar scale. One of the upper limbs ended in a club-like fist, and the other was tipped with a Vulcan cannon that had clearly been torn from the nose of a Soviet helicopter. A loop of armour-piercing bullets curved away from the arm and into the thing's back, which was fat and heavy behind the cockpit glass. Kitty thought the curved hood looked like something that had been stolen from a fighter jet, and wondered again just how much equipment Stark had managed to pilfer right from under the Ivans' noses.

"What are we supposed to do with it?" Madrox asked quizzically. "Does this thing even have a power source?"

"Up until a few days ago?" Stark said. "No. But that was before Jubilation and I managed to 'liberate' a couple dozen of the batteries that the Russkies use for their armour. A few of those in the engine unit, and we've been good to go ever since then." He stepped closer to the machine and opened the cockpit, climbing inside and settling himself into the battered leather of the machine's pilfered seat. Kitty watched him flip bank after bank of switches and push about half a dozen buttons, before she heard an almighty roar emerge from the thing's body. It lurched up to its full height and took a couple of deafening footsteps towards the rebels. She saw Stark's gleeful expression as the metal monster swung its single fist at the nearest wall, sending cracks spider-webbing throughout almost its entire surface, and then ducked as the cannon on its other arm blazed a few dozen rounds into the piles of empty crates stacked against the opposite wall, shredding them into matchsticks. "What do you think?" she heard Stark say cheerfully, over some kind of loudspeaker system.

"I think you're fucking insane, that's what I think!" she screamed at him angrily. "You think the Russkies will let you use this thing?"

"No," Stark replied with a shrug of his machine's exaggerated mechanical shoulders. "But I'll try it anyway." The cockpit opened with a depressurised hiss and Stark hopped down onto the floor, dropping briefly to his knees as he absorbed the impact of his landing. Standing up straight once again, he patted the metal brute's leg with his right hand and gestured at it with a nod of his head. "This thing could change the course of the war," he said matter-of-factly. "You could be in the presence of history in the making."

"Or we could be in the presence of a jackass writing cheques with his mouth that his engineering skills can't cash," Madrox snapped, anger writing itself all over his usually cheerful features. "I'll tell you something now, pal – I don't want to have to gamble my life on a big hunk of tin, and  _especially_  a big hunk of tin that got cobbled together by some shyster who I don't know from Adam. No offence."

"Easy, Jamie," Hank said, grasping Madrox's shoulder with a large hand. "This is good engineering – a little bit rough around the edges, but it works. You saw that yourself just now." He turned to Stark and pointed at the metal exoskeleton. "Can you guarantee the armour on that thing will hold against anything the Russians can throw at it?"

Stark nodded. "The amount of bullets Jubilation and I wasted trying to get through that armour plate says yes. We threw entire clips of armour-piercing rounds at it and it still wouldn't crack. A few dents here and there, but that's all. Nothing short of a tank round could kill this thing."

"That's all good, Stark, but how exactly are we supposed to get this heap out of here with us?" Cecilia snorted in contempt. "We were sent to get you out of this dump, not to baby-sit your pet project for you." Stark frowned, before he nodded towards the blacked-out window at the side of the building.

"You saw the Russkies' build-up of arms and men back there," he said, with a brief note of contempt showing in his voice. "With that much armour out there you're going to need something with you that can hit them back just as hard. My Iron Man suit is the best chance you're going to get for something like that – unless you're planning to steal a tank, of course, in which case I'll happily leave my years of work behind. It's your choice."

Kitty grimaced. She knew he was right, even if she didn't want to admit it; they were dangerously vulnerable at this point, and with the Soviets' armoured build-up getting closer and closer, the last thing she needed was to be caught several thousand guns short of the Ivans. "Okay," she sighed. "But we have to keep out of sight. We won't be able to use the sewers any more, unless you know of any super-sized manholes around here. How fast can that thing move?"

"Fifty miles an hour's its optimum speed," Stark began, "but I can get seventy out of it if I push it hard enough."

"Good," Kitty nodded, before she looked over at Danny, who was busily cleaning his machine gun with an oily rag. "Danny, I need you to run point, okay? Find out if there are any Ivans ahead of us, but  _don't_  engage them. Come back and tell me so that we can avoid them if we can help it."

"Are you kidding?" Danny spluttered, incredulous, before nodding at Stark's monstrous creation. "With that thing behind us we could cut a path through anything the Russkies have waiting!"

"That's right, we could," Madrox cut in, "but we won't. This is a rescue mission, not an excuse to slaughter Reds." He walked over to where Danny was sitting and put a hand on his shoulder firmly. "Trust me, we're safer that way." She returned her gaze to Stark then, gesturing towards the doorway. "After you."

Stark grinned, before walking back to his metal giant and climbing inside. Once he was secured, and the loudspeaker was working again, he said "Stand back. The doorway's going to need to be knocked through. Still, I've been meaning to do some work on this place, so this is as good a time as any…"

As he stomped towards the door and clenched his metal fist, ready to smash the brickwork around it into dust, Kitty wondered just what the hell she was letting herself and her troops in for.

* * *

 

Clint Barton settled himself down on the firing range and put his eye to the scope of his rifle, tracking the moving targets with practiced ease, and then squeezing off clinical shots with gentle, almost caressing movements of his trigger finger. Every round he fired punched through the centre of the target it hit, ripping a hole into the heart of the plywood and card figures and leaving them hanging off their rails like broken corpses. Clint smiled every time he fired, enjoying the enormous sensation of power he always felt when he was at work, and ejected a spent magazine without even looking. He slapped a new one in with a deft movement of his palm and then returned his gaze to the targets at the other end of the room.

"I trust I'm not interrupting anything?" came a voice from behind him. Clint rolled onto his back, his rifle ready to blow a hole in whomever it was who had startled him, until he saw that it was Captain Cortez. Putting his rifle up sheepishly, he got to his feet and stood uneasily to attention. Cortez waved him down with a casual flick of his wrist. "At ease, Mr Barton," he said, before he gave Clint one of his unnerving smiles. "Hard at work, I see?"

"Yes, sir," Clint replied, feeling a familiar nasty feeling starting to build inside his chest before he elected to cut right to the chase. "I've decided when I'm going to be carrying out this assignment, Captain."

"Oh?" Cortez said, raising an eyebrow. "And when is that, Crimson Commando?"

"There's a pretty high-profile military parade coming up in the next week," Clint said. "There are plenty of high buildings around for me to get a good vantage point – and from what I can tell, Commissar Braddock will be stood on a balcony watching everything, as a representative of the Soviet government as well as a local army commander. She'll be an easy target." Cortez smiled again, and Clint could feel a repulsed shudder working its way outwards from between his shoulder blades. Every time Cortez bared his teeth like that, he felt like a day-old fawn being circled by a hungry panther. Something about the man just made him want to turn tail and run…

"Well done, Mr Barton," Cortez began, with obvious relish. "You're a thorough man. Very…  _impressive…_  work."

"Thank you, sir," Clint said, even though he didn't really feel all that grateful. He had a great deal of respect for Colonel Braddock as a fellow soldier – and that respect was bolstered by the fact that although he was always willing to do whatever he'd been ordered to do, it wasn't compulsory for him to like it. Still, he wouldn't let that get in the way of doing his duty. He'd despised a good many of his previous assignments, after all, but he'd still carried them out to the letter. As the Crimson Commando, that was what was expected of him, and he wasn't about to let the reputation of the Soviet Union's resident "immortal" super-soldier suffer because of a few personal difficulties. "I'd like to get on with my practice, if I may, sir. Being frozen tends to throw my aim off a little, and I need some more time to really get it back."

Cortez nodded, waving a hand absently towards the targets hanging at the other end of the room. "Naturally. But I expect you to be fully fit and ready to carry out your mission as soon as possible, is that clear?"

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir," Clint said, standing to attention again and waiting for Cortez to salute him and leave. Once that was over and done with, he knelt down and resumed his firing position on the ground. Settling his eye back up against the sight of his rifle, he imagined Colonel Braddock's head coming into view in the centre of his crosshairs, and squeezed the trigger. In his mind's eye, he saw the woman's head explode like a melon hit with a sledgehammer, saw the decapitated body crumpling to the ground like a ruined concertina, saw the dead limbs flopping to the floor in a tangled heap, and he smiled grimly despite himself.

It wasn't going to be a nice job by any stretch of the imagination, of that he was certain, and he sure as hell wouldn't like himself after doing it, but somebody had to.


	6. Heavy Metal

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock shrugged herself out of her greatcoat and placed it and her peaked cap on the chair beside her, letting her uniformed shoulders sing with the reduced weight, before she pulled her long, blonde hair free of its severe bun, its golden tresses cascading around her shoulders, and unbuttoned her shirt and dress trousers. Throwing them aside almost carelessly, she smiled at the man lying naked on the bed in front of her, letting his eyes revel in the sight of her nude body. Stalking towards him like a tigress creeping towards a doe, she sat on the bed and lay down next to him, letting him feel the heat of her body against the flesh that she had deliberately allowed to become cold. The man gasped at the sudden warmth, and tried to say something, but Elisabeth put a finger to his mouth almost coyly.

"Shh," she purred, running her tongue over the edges of her lips. "Don't speak. You'll spoil the moment." She kissed his chest and neck, running her hands along the length of his tightly-secured arms, making sure that he was definitely not going anywhere while she could help it.  _And why would he?_  she thought with a sly inner smile.  _This is the culmination of his service here, after all…_  Reaching around him, she slid a hand underneath her pillow and drew out a long, thin stiletto dagger, distracting the man with a trail of kisses along his collarbone. He moaned as she pressed herself against him, his hands slipping through her hair as if it was a cascade of living sunlight… and then he let out a choked, liquid gurgle as Elisabeth plunged the dagger into his neck, spearing his carotid artery and slamming the blade through his windpipe. She ripped the serrated weapon free, twirling it about in her hand and speckling the sweat-soaked satin sheets with a scarlet fan of blood to match the rapidly-pooling torrent that was spilling from the massive wound in the man's throat. Then she shoved the knife deep into his convulsing stomach and twisted, feeling a thrill of satisfaction run through her as he thrashed feebly, gurgling again as he tried futilely to get away from her. Elisabeth put her face close to his ear, and whispered in a soft, seductive tone "Did you  _really_  think I didn't know what you were doing, Captain Cortez? I have eyes everywhere – and even without my telepathy, I saw everything.  _Everything._ " She laughed cruelly. "And much as he might like to think otherwise, General Doom is expendable. As are you." She twisted the knife again, and watched the light in Cortez' eyes extinguished like a snuffed-out candle. Getting up off the sodden bed and looking disdainfully at the blood smeared across her naked body, she spat on the corpse and then stalked into her private bathroom to clean herself up, after carving yet another tiny wound into the tally-marked skin of her left arm.  _Assign a clean-up detail to my private quarters, please, Lieutenant,_  she sent to Lieutenant Wagner.  _I have some rubbish here that I want dealt with._

 _As you wish, Commissar. They will be there as soon as possible,_  came the swift reply, and Elisabeth once again considered the possibility of promoting the diligent and conscientious young officer. He certainly had command potential, as he had demonstrated time and again while performing as her adjutant, and she wondered again whether it was time to reward that potential. Perhaps she would anonymously recommend him for promotion the next time the opportunity came up. Yes, that was ideal. At least that way he wouldn't start thinking she was somehow marking him out as a personal favourite…

 _Thank you, Lieutenant,_  she said, discarding that thought for the moment.  _That will be all._

 _Yes, sir,_  Lieutenant Wagner replied, and then Elisabeth sliced the psychic connection, cutting him out of her thoughts in an instant. She cracked her knuckles and stepped into the shower, feeling the hot water splash onto her skin, and smiled. Soon the trap would close on that old relic General Doom, and she would be rid of him for good.

 _Good riddance,_  she thought, acidly.

* * *

Kitty watched with disbelief as the giant suit of armour thundered along beside her soldiers with the grace and ease of something half its size. For a thing created from scavenged pieces of Soviet military hardware – and, from what Stark had told her, anything else he could get his hands on, including trashcan lids, car parts, and various motorcycles – it moved remarkably well, picking its way through the pockmarked backstreets and squeezing into the most improbable gaps without making a sound. She'd asked Stark how he'd managed to achieve something like that shortly after they'd begun their outward march, and he'd simply shrugged and said "Sorry, kid – Stark Industries copyright says I can't tell you, kid," before shifting his control stick and moving the metal giant into yet another tight space.

She moved past him and his constant companion, the younger teenager he'd called Jubilation, and fought to control her breathing when their point man Danny raised his hand to halt them. She threaded her way along the line and knelt down beside him, taking care to keep herself concealed in shadow as she did so. "What is it, Danny?" she whispered, feeling her hands automatically clenching around her rifle as if it was a comfort blanket.

"Russkies, two o'clock," Danny replied. He pointed across the road to where a couple of Russian soldiers were pacing down the street, guns at the ready, and their eyes scanning their surroundings, searching for anything unusual. "I could try wasting 'em from here, but I don't think my gun's got that kinda range."

"I'll do it," Tabby said casually, hefting her rifle and easing her way to the front of the group. "I got a way with long-distance shots. Ask Hank."

"It's true," Hank said, shrugging. "I have seen Tabitha here excel on the firing range."

Cecilia raised an eyebrow. "Wait… when did that happen?"

"I've been… tutoring Tabitha in marksmanship," Hank explained sheepishly. Cecilia scowled.

"And you didn't tell me about this… why?"

Tabby grinned, her scarred face making the gesture seem all the more ghoulish. "Ooh… getting a bit  _jealous,_  are we,  _chica_? Well, don't you worry: Hank's not my type. Too hairy."

"Quiet, all of you, unless you  _want_  to get shot in the face," Kitty hissed, anger flashing across her face as her hand strayed to the grip of one of her pistols. "Make the shots count, Tabby: I don't want us to be discovered."

Tabby put two fingers to her brow. "Got it, boss." She put her eye to the targeting sight of her rifle, settled her finger into the trigger guard, and then squeezed the trigger twice. Kitty watched, satisfied, as the two soldiers dropped without a word.

"Good work, kid," Madrox said. "Now maybe we can get out of this place without attracting any more Ivans." His expression of hope soon turned to one of abject disbelief when he looked out of the alley and saw a tank trundling down the street, its treads squealing as its massive bulk moved slowly towards the rebels. "Oh, shit," he breathed. "Where the fuck did that come from?"

"I don't know," Kitty said resolutely, "but we've got to get past that thing." She glanced up at Stark in his metal cocoon. "Time for you to earn your bread, Mr Stark. Make those Ivans suffer."

"With pleasure," Stark replied, and he pushed a few buttons on the bank of controls on front of him. His metal monster stomped forwards, swivelling at the waist and emerging from the alleyway with its gun-arm blazing. The gunner in the tank's turret exploded in a spray of red and white fragments, ribbons of skin and splinters of bone splattering the tank's armour. The turret itself quickly turned to aim at the suit Stark had called his "Iron Man", and Kitty could hear, even from this distance, the clunking of shells being loaded into the tank's main gun. Stark seemed unconcerned, however, as he gunned the suit's engines and drove it forwards at speed, his gun arm still vomiting steel at an absurd rate. The bullets spanged off the tank's frontal armour uselessly, leaving only tiny marks where they had ricocheted off into the sidewalk. Suddenly, Kitty noticed two pods flipping out and settling onto the suit's shoulders, and she realised that the bullets were just a distraction. The hollow  _whoosh_  of something launching from them alerted her to the fact that Stark had just fired a pair of rockets directly at the tank from a ridiculously short range. Both rockets impacted against the tank's treads, blowing them to metal fragments and causing it to list to one side like a dying shark. Stark used the momentary delay to pound towards the tank and plunge the fingers of his suit's metal fist into the side of the turret. It clenched them, crumpling the metal in its grip like a collapsing house of cards, and then drew its arm upwards, ripping the turret off with almost casual ease. Flinging the turret to one side like a bored child, Stark's armour then shoved its weapon arm into the top of the vehicle and let loose a blazing volley of fire. Kitty heard the wet, hopeless screams of the tank's crew, and watched as the Iron Man suit pulled the tank to pieces as if it was nothing more than a tin can, throwing chunks of ruptured armour plating to either side of the vehicle's carcass.

"I have  _got_  to get me one of those," Madrox breathed, in awe.

"I think the question we should be asking ourselves is this," Hank began, instantly all business again now that the immediate threat was gone. "Why was there a tank in the middle of downtown San Francisco? I don't recall hearing about any kind of urban pacification policy here, after all."

Madrox shrugged. "Maybe the Ivans are cracking down on the neighbourhood because some punk kid spray-painted the Stars and Stripes on a wall somewhere. You know how they get when they think their authority is being threatened." He paused as the sound of dozens of powerful engines echoed through the streets. Swallowing, he nodded to Danny. "Danny, go check out that noise. If you see anything, come back here right away.  _Do not_  go any closer."

Danny looked over at Kitty, Cecilia and Hank for confirmation, and Kitty inclined her head in the same direction Madrox had indicated. "Go on. We'll be right here if you need us." With a brief acknowledgement of her order, Danny started creeping off towards the source of the sound, keeping to the shadows and hunkering down behind trash cans whenever he could. Kitty watched him go, and then turned to look up at Stark in his metal cocoon. "You'd better get out of sight, too. The Russkies are bound to start shooting at you if they discover a fucking huge robot suit out in the open."

Through the Plexiglas canopy of his cockpit, Stark grinned at her. "Kid, I'm positively counting on it." Then he turned the suit on one of its heavy-duty heels and walked it slowly towards the cover of a nearby alleyway again, keeping it cloaked in shadows. That would keep it concealed from all but the most determined of investigations, Kitty thought – and anybody who got any closer would soon wish they hadn't.  _Everybody wins,_  she decided with a harsh half-smile.

Her amusement died when she saw Danny running back to their position with an extremely frightened look on his face. "What's the story, Danny?" Madrox asked, concerned, beating Kitty to the punch as he did so.

"Tanks," Danny said breathlessly. "Hundreds of tanks. And from the looks of things, this isn't pacification. It's a celebration."

"A celebration?" Tabby said, snorting in contempt, her ugly scars creasing and twisting like snakes. "Of what? This town ain't exactly got much to celebrate."

"I'd guess it's more of a show of force," Hank said thoughtfully, a hand to his chin. "This is to show the native populace that they are under the Ivans' collective bootheel and there's nothing they can do about it. Typical Russkie procedure, as I recall."

"Then we have to find a way to stop it, don't we?" Cecilia said, slapping her right fist against the palm of her other hand. "We have to show the Ivans they don't own us!"

"No, Cecilia, we don't," snapped Kitty, angrily. "We lay low, hopefully until this parade is over, and then we get the hell out of here. I don't want to get caught short by thirty thousand Soviet soldiers, and I bet if you think about it neither do you. Am I right?"

Cecilia looked as if she was having trouble biting back an angry retort for a moment or two, but then she swallowed her pride and nodded silently, looking down at her feet for a moment or so. "Okay," she muttered, sounding disappointed. "Okay. It's your call, Kitty." Kitty could tell that she was not at all happy about being told what to do, but it was a relief to see her doing it nevertheless. She'd need that kind of efficiency if they were to get out of this in one piece.

* * *

Adjusting the psychic blind-spot generator that Captain Cortez had given him, Clint Barton settled himself down onto the rooftop that he would be using for his mission. It was, as he knew it would be, cold, hard and unforgiving, and it made his skin crawl, even underneath the colourless, insulating body glove he wore. An infrared targeting device was clipped to the side of his head, hinged upwards for the moment. It felt like an unnecessary complication, since he had always trusted his rifle's targeting sight and his own vision to do his job, but he took comfort in the fact that he didn't have to use it if he didn't want to – after all, he was all alone up here. Who would know if he ignored orders?

 _Somebody would find out,_  he thought acidly.  _Somebody always does._  He cradled his rifle in the crook of his elbow and made a quick sweep of the area below him. At once, he could see the balcony from which Commissar-Colonel Braddock and General Doom would be overseeing the parade, and the long, straight street that the procession of tanks and soldiers would be moving down. Already he could see the lines of civilians beginning to fill either side of the road, behind the solid metal barricades that would keep them from running in front of the tanks and soldiers.

And then he saw the first wave of soldiers marching down the street in rigid parade-ground formation, all of them precisely in step with the others and with their rifles held at almost exactly the same angle. Trundling behind them was a pristinely-decorated tank, its flanks and turret splattered with the Soviet star and the hammer and sickle. Its armour had clearly just come from the factory, and Clint wondered just how long it would be before it was as pitted and scarred as all the other tanks he'd seen in his time in service to the Motherland. Another tank just like it followed closely, accompanied by a second wave of Soviet troops. The formation repeated itself half a dozen times, until the street was almost totally full of Russian soldiers. Along the parade's route, Clint could see the artificial enthusiasm of the crowds, who were clearly just there to avoid getting shot, and he could identify with their obvious desire to be somewhere else – he was still terribly unsure that he was doing the right thing in following Captain Cortez's orders: nothing he'd seen of Commissar-Colonel Braddock's record indicated that she should be executed like this. Still, he reasoned, this was his job, and this was his mission. That came first, not his personal feelings.

Then, looking down at the balcony again, he saw General Doom and Commissar-Colonel Braddock making their way out at last.  _Time to bite the bullet, Clint,_  he thought sourly, and then pulled down the targeting device, put his eye to his rifle, and settled his finger into the trigger guard. When he saw Commissar-Colonel Braddock appear in his crosshairs, he pulled the trigger, and felt his guilt melt away.

* * *

Commissar-Colonel Braddock stepped out onto the balcony, putting her hands behind her back after adjusting her cap a little, and then turned to see General Doom's rejuvenated body following her out. She hated the smug look he'd had on his face ever since Dr Pym had dosed him up with the healing-factor serum – he clearly knew that he was her equal again, and that irked her a great deal. Up until now he had been an annoyance at best, but now he was a thorn in her side that was growing by the day.  _That will end soon enough,_  she thought with brief satisfaction. She saluted him with a brief, thin smile, and he returned the gesture with an equally small amount of warmth and sincerity.

"Commissar," he said.

"General," Elisabeth replied, before she nodded down towards the columns of tanks and men. "I do hope today's parade goes according to plan – it seems like it would be a lot of effort for nothing otherwise."

"Yes," Doom said, gripping the balcony's rail with both hands and watching the tanks roll past like armoured beetles. "I've ordered my troops to put down any disturbances as quickly and efficiently as possible. We shouldn't have any trouble."

"One hopes not, General," Elisabeth said, moving to stand alongside him. "Otherwise I shall hold you personally responsible." She moved away from the railing and inspected the masonry above the doors to the interior offices, running her fingers over the cold stone and examining them casually.

Doom pulled one side of his mouth up in another cold smile. "I'm sure you will. I wouldn't expect anything less."

Suddenly, the sharp crack of rifle fire barked loudly in the still air. In the scant fragments of time she knew she had before the bullet crushed her skull, Elisabeth was already grabbing Doom by his lapels and swinging him in front of her as a human shield. She watched the pain on Doom's face in satisfaction as the bullet punched into his spine, shattering it for the second time. She felt the bullet finally impact against the body armour she was wearing underneath her greatcoat, almost driving the breath from her lungs as it did so, but that was all it did. She supposed that that was a fair pay-off for letting her survive.

Dragging Doom's limp form up to her eye level, she glared at him, finally letting her anger to the surface. "Traitorous filth," she hissed. "I killed your little henchman Captain Cortez earlier today, and now I'm killing you. If you thought this was a good idea, then you deserve it." She snorted in contempt. "And as for putting a psychic blind-spot in such a crowded area… you might as well have simply  _told_  me where to look. You're an idiot, Doom, and the Red Army is better off without you."

Doom coughed up a trickle of bright red blood, spilling it down his scarred chin as he did so. "Stupid… bitch," he gurgled. "I'll… be healed in a moment… then I'll have you arrested."

"No. You won't," Elisabeth snarled. "General Victor von Doom, you have been found wanting by the Commissariat of the Soviet Union, and are hereby found guilty of treason. The sentence is death." She knew she had only seconds to act before the new enzymes in Doom's blood began to fix the damage that had been done to him, so she had to act now, or face some unpleasant difficulties. Grasping her service automatic, she dragged it out of its holster, put it to the side of General Doom's head, and pulled the trigger. The surprised look in Doom's eyes as he collapsed in a bloody heap was one she would savour for a long time to come. Reaching into a pocket of her greatcoat and drawing out a headset microphone, she jacked it into the public address system that was set in the corner of the balcony, which was intended for inspirational speeches to an obedient public. Slipping the headset on, she barked "People of San Francisco! See what happens when you betray the Soviet Union!" Dragging the General's corpse up, she shoved it over the balcony's edge and watched it tumble limply to the ground like a broken doll, eventually impacting with bone-shattering force against the sidewalk. Pulling the headset off, Elisabeth turned on one heel and marched inside. She had better things to do than watch a parade, after all…

* * *

Clint cursed as the shot he'd just fired impacted against General von Doom instead of his intended target. He quickly ejected the spent cartridge from his rifle and slammed another into the chamber, readying himself for another shot in the space of a split second… and then he noticed a fragrance of rose petals around him – which definitely hadn't been there before. He scrambled up from his prostrate position and raised his rifle, sweeping the rooftop with a single glance.

Nothing. There was nothing there.  _What the hell's going on?_  he thought, utterly confused – and then he felt a pair of lips softly brush themselves against his cheek. He spun round, bringing his rifle to bear as fast as he could – but as fast as he was, he wasn't as fast as the slender, serrated combat knife that was pressed against his throat. He glanced at it for a second, before looking up into the eyes of who was holding it. Brilliant green fire looked back at him, framed by tousled red hair and a classically beautiful Russian face. Wiry, panther-like muscles filled out a grey one-piece uniform with a stylised black widow spider emblazoned on the right breast.

"Natasha…" Clint breathed, feeling the cold steel bite into his neck a little as he did so. "Didn't expect to see you here."

"Nor I you, Clint," Natasha Romanova said in a softly-accented voice. "It seems that we are on opposite sides this time. A pity; I always enjoyed working with you." She withdrew the knife from his throat, grabbed his lapel, and kissed him with a primal energy that Clint knew he'd been a fool to give up. He felt himself getting lost in the kiss, touching Natasha's face and drawing her closer to him – and that was when he felt the knife sliding between his ribs. He staggered backwards, feeling blood pumping from the wound in his chest, looking at her with a questioning expression on his face. Natasha looked… upset, almost, and she touched his cheek with an apologetic hand. "I'm sorry, Clint, but orders are orders. We will meet again, I'm sure."

The world blurred. Clint felt his knees buckle, and then the lights went out.

* * *

Clint opened his eyes with a start, surprised to find himself alive. It took him a moment to realise that he was vertical, and that he was suspended in some kind of liquid with an oxygen mask over his face. He looked around to see if he could determine where he was, and saw that the roof of the capsule in which he was floating was only a few feet above him. He raised both of his hands to it and pushed as hard as he could, but it was sealed tightly. A sense of panic washed over him as he realised that he was trapped.

"Don't get excited, Mr Barton, you're quite safe," said a voice, seemingly from out of nowhere. Then Clint realised that there was a miniature implant nestled in a rubber container over his right ear, which was why the voice was crystal-clear and not at all muffled by the water around him. He looked out of the tube to see if he could determine who was speaking, and saw a woman in a greatcoat and cap standing by herself in the centre of the room, with her hands clasped behind her back. She marched closer and pressed her fingers against the glass. "Hello, Crimson Commando," she said with an almost demonic smile crossing her lips. "I have a job for you…"


	7. Blood Trails

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock stood in the area of the Soviet base that had been previously set aside for Dr Pym's test subjects, watching the Crimson Commando swinging and flipping gracefully from the training equipment that had been set up for him. She watched as he propelled himself off one set of handholds with a powerful leap, grabbing the closest support bar with one hand and using that as a pivot to shift himself up onto the highest level of the equipment. Without pausing for breath, he somersaulted off the platform's edge and landed on the padded mat on the exercise area's floor, finding his balance in a fraction of an instant. Casually, he walked over to where a towel had been set out for him, and wiped off the light sheen of sweat that clung to his sleekly-toned muscles. Elisabeth turned to Dr Pym, who had been watching their mutual experiment with equal fascination, and said "So, Doctor… do you think Mr Barton is ready to be sent out into the field again?"

"More than ready, I'd say," Dr Pym replied. "His wound is almost completely healed – and my medical scans have shown me that large areas of his body are enhanced with what looks like… well, like machinery. In fact, there are some parts of him that look like they'd be better fixed by an engineer rather than a doctor."

"Yes, I know," Elisabeth said with a thin smile, enjoying Dr Pym's look of total disbelief. "Oh, don't look so surprised, Doctor – I'm a Commissar; I can look at virtually anything in the Red Army's database, whenever I choose. According to my research, the Crimson Commando project was intended to give an ordinary human endurance beyond any normal biological limits. He was engineered to be able to stay in the same spot for hours – even days, if necessary – so that he would always be in the best spot to eliminate a target. His blood-flow and metabolism can be consciously slowed to a sufficient degree that he can survive for days without food or water in one single sniping position, and his muscles are laced with cybernetic filaments that minimise the release of lactic acid. Essentially, he's able to keep going almost indefinitely, or until he accomplishes his mission." She smiled again, wolfishly enjoying Dr Pym's involuntary shudder. "Whichever comes sooner."

"But… if that's the case," Dr Pym began, confused, "why am I carrying out my research here? Surely the results of that project speak for themselves?"

"The Crimson Commando role was always defined as a solo counter-espionage operative," Elisabeth explained. "Besides which, all that miniaturised hardware is prohibitively expensive – far too expensive for mass production, I assure you. That's why Mr Barton there has always been frozen in between assignments; it was far more economical to do that than keep him around for any longer than necessary. Your research, on the other hand, is both less expensive and far easier to produce on a large scale. Trust me, Doctor… this is a far better option."

"I see," Dr Pym said, before he looked over his notes again, briefly. He cleared his throat and continued "The initial recipients of the combination serum are ready for a field test within the next forty-eight hours. I've asked for them to be equipped with medical kits just in case something goes wrong, but I don't see any need for them. The serum performed well enough that most minor injuries were healed within a few seconds, with larger and more complex wounds taking only a fraction of the time that they normally would."

"Example," Elisabeth said in a short tone, glancing impatiently over a clipboard that was laid on top of a table in front of her. Dr Pym cleared his throat again and pointed to a flow chart that he had drawn onto a board in green marker-pen. It gave details of wounds suffered by the trainees during their exercises, and the corresponding time it had taken the serum in their bloodstream to fix the damage. It astonished even her: broken bones were setting themselves in around ten minutes at the most, with ruptured organs being repaired in under a fraction of that time. Inwardly, she thanked her sense of good judgement for having killed General Von Doom while she'd had the chance – because according to the chart, he'd have been up and charging at her before she could have blinked twice, his snapped spinal cord and shattered ribcage completely healed. She raised her eyebrows, and then picked up her peaked cap and set it on her tightly-bound hair. "I'd like to talk to him, if I may," she said, indicating Clint Barton with a single thumb.

"Go right ahead," Dr Pym said, spreading his hands wide, as if granting her permission. Elisabeth turned on her heel without saying another word and then stalked silently towards where Clint was still resting after his workout, alternately drinking cold water from a plastic bottle and eating some pieces of dried fruit, as well as splashing water over his sweat-caked, scar-streaked torso. She stood behind him, intending to wait for him to notice that she was there, but instead of seeing him turn to face her, she saw him simply turn his head a little and look at her out of the corner of his left eye as he continued to towel himself off.

"If you've come to thank me for not killing you, Commissar," he said, without letting any expression into his voice, "you're welcome."

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow. "I think Natasha must have damaged more than just your left lung when she brought you in, Mr Barton. Remember who it is you're talking to."

"Oh, right. I forgot," Clint muttered, before he stood up to face her and offered her a lazy salute. With that done, he was just in the middle of sitting down again when Elisabeth smashed into him from behind, locking his left arm painfully up between his shoulder blades and driving a knee into the small of his back. As he lay coughing and wheezing in a shocked heap, Elisabeth lowered her mouth close to his ear.

"Disrespect me like that again, Crimson Commando," she hissed, "and I will not be so gentle next time. You may be a special soldier and a hero of the Revolution, but I think I just proved that you are not invincible, or indispensable. And unless you give me the respect a Commissar of the Soviet Union warrants, I will not hesitate to prove it again. With this." She drew her automatic pistol with her free hand and jammed it against the back of his skull. "Dodge that, if you can." Having made her point, Elisabeth released him and holstered her pistol. "Now… I think you owe me something, don't you?"

"Yes…  _sir_." Clint gave her a look that could have seared a hole through solid granite, simultaneously rolling his shoulder to try and get some feeling back into it and rubbing the nascent bruise on his cheek, but he still managed to stand up straight and offer Elisabeth a far crisper salute than his first had been. Elisabeth returned the salute and then put her hands behind her back, looking satisfied now that she had made her point.

"Good," she said, walking over to where her cap had fallen and tucking it under her arm. "Now then… I have a job for you. How do you feel like doing some hunting?"

Clint raised an eyebrow. "Excuse me?"

"One of my tank crews radioed in a curious message just before we lost contact with them," Elisabeth explained, folding her arms across her chest after placing her cap on the bench where Clint was sitting. "They mentioned that some kind of… robot was attacking them, a robot with a human pilot. The wreckage of the tank we found earlier today seemed to support that statement, as the armour looked like it had been torn apart by hand as well as by weapons fire – and as far as we can determine, the only kind of person in this city with the kind of mechanical expertise to build such a thing is one Tony Stark. My troops have been looking for him for some time now, but have come up short every time." She extended a finger towards Clint. "I was rather hoping you could assist us in achieving that goal."

"Sure." Clint smiled then, his previous irritation vanishing in the space of a single breath, and he picked up his sniper rifle, which had been laid lovingly on the bench next to him. "When should I get started?"

* * *

"Fuck!" Kitty cursed through gritted teeth. Madrox moved up beside her in a running crouch and squatted down beside her, putting his rifle down on the dirty ground as he did so.

"What is it?" he asked. Kitty pointed off to the left of the alleyway, where a small knot of Russian soldiers was standing guard outside a run-down building that nonetheless apparently had a great deal of significance, as Soviet troops were moving in and out of it with almost clockwork regularity. Madrox looked at Kitty again, his face pale. "Probably an ammo store," he muttered, before turning in place and pointing a finger at Stark. "You – tin man. Stay out of sight, or we're all dead." He looked back at Kitty again. "What do you want to do?"

Kitty gave him a contemptuous look through the slitted corner of one eye. "What do I want to do? What I  _want_  to do is sit down and smoke cigarettes until I pass out from a nicotine overdose. What I'm  _going_  to do is something else entirely." She paused, and then nodded back down the alleyway. "Turn around, all of you – we've got to find another way through this area of town. I'm not attracting any more attention than necessary, and that means not trying to go through a bunch of Russkies with far more ammunition than us – even if we do have Robbie the Robot to back us up, all it'd take is one rocket-launcher round to that thing's leg and we'd be all out of options." She saw Stark begin to protest, and shook her head. " _No_ , Stark. I'm not risking you getting your head blown off just to prove a point about how tough your little toy is. Got it?" Stark pondered the point for a moment, scowling, and then raised his suit's three-fingered fist, dropping the first and third fingers defiantly. Kitty smiled in a thin, threadbare way. "Glad to see you understand. First time I've ever had a toaster flip me off, that's for sure. Now come on, guys, time's a-wasting." She led her squad back down the alleyway, leaving Stark as a rearguard, and then started creeping along the pathway that she'd cleared only minutes before, before a muffled shriek erupted from the rear of her column of rebels. She swung round in the blink of an eye, to see Hank clamping his hand down over Jubilation's mouth as she frantically tried to run back towards the Russian base. Immediately, she saw that Stark was missing.

_Oh, no…_

Horrified, she ran back to the alleyway's mouth, and watched as Stark charged towards the base as quickly as his suit allowed, the suit's weapon arm vomiting lead and chopping down Soviet troops like winnowed wheat. One of the rocket pods on his suit's shoulder flipped up and sent a full spread of missiles flashing through the air into the front of the building, smashing the brickwork and setting off secondary explosions in the tightly-stacked ammunition boxes, bullets and grenades cooking off as the missiles detonated in their midst. Those Soviet soldiers not caught by Stark's brutal barrage of machine-gun fire screeched in pain as flame clawed hungrily at clothes and ragged chunks of metal stabbed themselves deeply into flesh and bone. The building almost sagged as the explosions died out, and Stark turned his suit at the waist and gave Kitty a thumbs-up, as if that would excuse his disobeying a direct order. Kitty clenched her fists and stormed closer to the robot, her eyes burning with rage.

"And just the holy  _fuck_  was that, Stark?" she spat, furiously, gesturing at the carnage that Stark had caused. "I said we were going to find another way around. You don't think that the Ivans  _might just_ notice that one of their big arms depots just got totalled? What the fuck were you thinking?"

Stark raised an eyebrow, his expression cut off from the rest of the world by his cockpit-glass. "I was clearing us a path, Miss Pryde," he said, without a trace of smugness or arrogance. "This is the quickest way out of San Francisco. I don't want to spend any more time looking out for Russkie patrols than I have to, and if this gets me that wish, then I'll do what I have to do."

"Is that right?" Kitty snarled, and then leapt at Stark's cockpit, phasing herself through its glass just enough that she could grab hold of his shirt and shove her face right into his. "I'm in command here, Stark, not you – so when I tell you to do something, you do it  _without question_. Do you get it?"

"Absolutely," Stark said, keeping his voice even and calm. Kitty was about to launch into another tirade when she heard some blood-choked gurgles coming from the wreckage of the building. She cursed, realising what they would have to do now.

"Hear that?" she said, jerking a thumb at the wrecked armoury. "Those are casualties of war. We can't afford to leave them here because they'll tell the Russkies what happened here. We can't afford to take them with us, because they'll just slow us down. The only option we've got is to kill them so they can't talk." She scowled. "Since you got us into this shitstorm in the first place, you're the one that's going to clean it up." Stark started to walk over to the building, his suit's hydraulic joints hissing, when Kitty shook her head. "Not like that, Stark. Get out of that thing." Stark's suit pivoted at the waist, so that she could see his expression of total disbelief. "You heard me. Get out.  _Now._ " Stark hesitated for a moment, but then the cockpit flipped up slowly and he stepped down onto the cracked sidewalk, looking like a child deprived of his favourite comfort blanket. Kitty stepped up to him and handed him one of her automatic pistols. "I want you to understand what this war is like, Stark. I want you to  _look_  at what you're killing, instead of just pushing buttons. You want to be a soldier? Now's your chance."

Stark looked like he might be sick then, but he went over to the building's ruins, pistol in hand. Kitty followed closely behind him, clutching her other pistol in case Stark didn't follow through with his assigned task, and watched him as he walked up to the first easily visible Russian soldier. The man was young, possibly only just out of his teens, and had been hit in the stomach and left shoulder. He was barely conscious, blood still pulsing steadily from his wounds, but he was alert enough to see Stark walking up to him with a gun pointing straight at his head. "Nyet!" he gurgled. "Please – I swear I will tell nobody what I have seen here! Please don't kill me!" Stark glanced back desperately to see Kitty standing with her arms folded, giving him a stony-faced look.

"If you don't do it, Stark, I will," she hissed. "You think we can trust a Russkie to keep a secret? I don't." Stark took a deep breath and tightened his finger on the trigger of his pistol, watching the fear in the other man's eyes growing with each passing second. He could feel tears beginning to form at the corner of his eyes, and the he could feel the pistol starting to shake in his hand, until he raised the gun and turned back towards Kitty.

"I… I can't do it," he said, his voice a thin echo of what it had been previously. "He's just a boy. I –"

Kitty raised her pistol and planted a bullet straight between the soldier's eyes, splashing his brains all over the bare concrete floor and silencing his pleas for mercy. She looked over at Stark, who was regarding her with a mixture of shock and horror. "Next time, Stark, follow your fucking orders." Turning, she signalled for the rest of the squad to join her. When they had crossed the street, she nodded at the interior of the building. "Clean this place up – and do it quickly. We can't afford to stay here any longer than we have to." Hank and Cecilia nodded and raised their weapons, followed by the rest of her squad.

It took less than five minutes to wipe out the last vestiges of the force that once occupied the building. Nobody spoke for a long time afterwards.

* * *

The gymnasium had been cleared of all the equipment that the Crimson Commando had requested, and was bare again, save for a pair of soft mats and a vaulting horse. Elisabeth Braddock hefted her sabre in her right hand and aimed a punishing slash at the left calf of her opponent, the heavy blade howling through the air and missing flesh by a whisper. Undaunted by her miss, Elisabeth grinned broadly and fended off her opponent's return strike with the edge of her sword, sparks igniting for an instant as metal scraped on metal. Combat was always more fun, she decided, if she didn't use her telepathy to predict what her opponent was going to do next. That way everything that happened was a new experience – and it was that which she really enjoyed the most, if she was honest with herself.

Her opponent thrust the heel of his palm at her, aiming to trick her off-balance, but Elisabeth simply ghosted out of its path and slapped it away with her own free hand. "You can do better than that!" she laughed, licking her lips in a predatory fashion. "Stop holding back!"

"Maybe I'm just lulling you into a false sense of security?" Clint chuckled as he swung his sword towards her body in a broad arc, forcing Elisabeth to throw herself abruptly backwards to avoid its lethally-sharp edge. Dropping to one knee she lashed out with her booted foot, chopping at Clint's calf as if she were aiming to cut down a tree. Clint saw it too late and had to try and stay upright as his leg began to fold underneath him, fending off Elisabeth's hacking strikes as she sprang to her full height and pressed her advantage with relish. Holding his sword horizontally, Clint parried as many blows as he could before one found his shoulder, slicing deeply into the meat and making him howl in pain.

"Or maybe you're just not as good as you thought?" Elisabeth gloated, touching her bare fingers to the bloodied surface of her blade and licking them clean. "The propaganda people would love to see this, wouldn't they?"

"I'm sure they would," Clint grunted, the pain of his torn shoulder etching itself on his face, "but not for the reasons you think they would." With that, he pushed himself off his knees with an almost supernatural speed, lancing towards Elisabeth and catching her at the waist, driving her to the floor and sucking all the air out of her lungs. Before she could register what had happened, he was already up and moving, his blade pressing itself against her throat. "I think this means you lose, Commissar." He raised his sabre and then offered her his hand, which Elisabeth took with a mild scowl, annoyed that she had been bested. Clint noticed her expression and smiled despite the wound in his shoulder (which Elisabeth had noticed had already stopped bleeding despite the depth and severity of the cut). "Looks like we're even, doesn't it?"

Elisabeth paused for a moment, before she sheathed her sabre and then offered Clint a rudimentary smile. "I suppose we are, yes," she said rather grudgingly. "You're a good swordsman – there aren't many people on my staff who I can spar with like that."

"I got trained in a lot of things when I was being prepared for this," Clint replied with a shrug. "If you want to play bows and arrows, I could do that, too."

"I see," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, before she stepped closer to him and put her arms around his waist. "That's an interesting thought, Crimson Commando… but I prefer  _contact_  sports. Can you oblige me there, as well?"

"Totally," Clint replied, with a wry smile. "I might be a little out of practice, but I think I could give it a shot."

 _Good,_  Elisabeth told him telepathically as she kissed him.  _Consider this a good luck charm…_


	8. Pistol Whipped

Clint Barton knelt down in a dusty alleyway and touched his fingertips to a small patch of dirt on the sidewalk, raising them to his nose and taking a short inward breath as he closed his eyes to reduce the number of distractions around him. His cybernetically-enhanced senses immediately started processing the dirt's contents to try and isolate any key scents that he could use to track his quarry – it was a long shot, he knew, but trial and error were always key factors in finding a target that had gone to ground. In this case, machine oil seemed like as good a place as any to start, considering that Tony Stark was apparently piloting a robot of some kind. Clint wondered whether the fact that the regular Red Army couldn't find a man in a giant robot suit was a compliment to Tony Stark, or a damning indictment of the Russian Army's training methods. He decided to take it as the former, since he'd been trained by the best the Russian Army had to offer, and he knew that their training methods were hardly lacklustre in any way, shape or form. Suddenly his eyes flared open as his senses hit upon an unusual scent, a metallic, viscous odour that coated his olfactory membranes like tar, and he grinned broadly as he realised that he had taken the first step towards catching his prey. Turning his head from left to right, he tried to catch any indication of which way the scent trail led, thanking his good luck there was very little wind in the city tonight. Had there been any strong gusts, then his chances of tracking Stark and whoever else was with him would have been virtually non-existent. As it was, though, he could tell that the trail snaked off to his right, surrounded by that of several other humans. One of the scents was sporadic at best, which puzzled him a little since the rest of the trails were so relatively strong, but he simply raised his eyebrows and decided to try solving that riddle later.

Pushing himself to his feet, he shouldered his rifle and began padding down the alleyway like a ghost, threading his way through piles of garbage and the sprawled, stinking bodies of the few homeless people that had taken refuge in the shadows. Making a mental note to ask for a detachment of humanitarian aid-workers to make a visit here, Clint gathered strength in his legs and sprang up towards a rusting fire-escape that was bolted to the side of one of the buildings, catching the edge of the structure with both hands and then swung himself up and around so that he landed on the stairwell, crouching low automatically so as to absorb the impact, however small. Training died hard, he realised with a small degree of amusement. Standing, he jogged steadily up towards the roof of the building, keeping his heart-rate just above its usual twenty-five beats a minute, and then found his way over to the edge of the rooftop. Without a pause, he launched himself off the brickwork and somersaulted over to the next roof. From up here, he could move towards his targets without any fear of obstruction from civilians. He detested the idea of putting them in harm's way, since he knew that most of them were just trying to get by from day to day, and didn't exactly deserve to be thrown into the middle of a conflict. The way he saw things, soldiers were soldiers for a reason, and they were the ones who should be targeted. In his first month as a soldier, he'd seen the bodies of children left in the wreckage of battle left by his fellow Red Army troops, and it had made him violently sick. He'd promised himself at that point that he would go out of his way to prevent that sort of thing from happening again. It was a vain hope, he knew, but he also knew he had to try. He was a killer, but that didn't mean he had to be a murderer too.

His feet pounding on the concrete of the roof, Clint leapt again, grabbing hold of an exposed pipe and using it to propel himself across another gap, impacting lithely against a wall and almost bouncing straight off it, the ricocheting movement giving him an extra few metres of distance. Despite himself, despite the inevitable outcome of this mission, Clint couldn't help but smile at the freedom he was experiencing here – it was always the same when he was let loose like this. The power he'd been given by his superiors was something he knew nobody else had ever had, and that gave him an indescribable, electric thrill. He somersaulted up to a higher surface, a water tower, and grabbed hold of one of the metal struts supporting it. Clinging to it for a moment or two, he looked out over the city's darkening skyline and knew that his targets would never know what had hit them.

* * *

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock stood in her office with her hands clasped behind her back, looking out of the window as the deep-orange light of the setting sun refracted through the glass, spilling a mournful, dying glow across the desk and bookshelves that filled the room. For a moment, Elisabeth found herself wishing that she could be out there alongside the Crimson Commando, tracking down that idiotic group of rebels so that they could be sent to the local gulag, and then turned and looked at the mound of paperwork waiting for her. Since General von Doom's death at her hands, there had been at least a dozen new responsibilities laid on her shoulders – as the ranking officer and Commissar, it was her job to take command now that the General and the treacherous Lieutenant Cortez had been cut out of the Red Army's flesh. She cursed under her breath again, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day; this was exactly the sort of thing she had hoped to avoid when she'd been transferred here from New York, and it was driving her to distraction. She pulled her pistol from its holster and contemplated going down to the firing range in the belly of the building just to let off some steam, but she knew that the forms and umpteen other matters awaiting her attention would still be there on her desk when she got back, and that would defeat the purpose of going to the firing range in the first place. Better, she decided, to deal with them now and get them out of the way. Then, perhaps, she could loose off a few rounds or practice her swordsmanship. Her lips creased at one corner, pleased with that idea, and so she sat down at her desk, picked up her pen, and began signing her name to the first of the forms, the nib of the pen scritch-scratching softly against the unusually expensive paper. She had been signing forms for about half an hour, barely scanning what was written on the documents themselves, before she picked up a single page that was covered in Cyrillic script – this kind of brevity was unusual for military documents, she knew, so it stood out immediately. Looking over it with an intrigued eye, she dropped her pen in shock when she read the last few lines.

It was a death warrant. Her death warrant.

Apparently, Doom had had a contingency plan in effect – he had clearly known what an onerous task signing forms was for an officer of her temperament, and had obviously hoped that even if he had been found out, she still would have been eliminated because she had been too busy signing forms to realise that she had condemned herself… which meant that it was very likely that there were still some of Doom's sympathisers infesting this command. Elisabeth narrowed her eyes and bared her teeth as a burning rage welled up inside her.  _The old fool still won't lie down and die, even when he's cold in his grave,_ she thought, her emotions like acid splashing against her mind.  _Whoever issued this is going to tell me everything they know, and then I am going to gut them._  Angrily, she crumpled the death warrant and tore it into tiny pieces with a few well-placed movements of her hands, throwing the creased, ragged remains into her paper shredder so that even the fragments were unreadable. She touched two fingers to her temple and said  _Lieutenant Wagner. I need you in my office right now._  It took a couple of seconds, but Lieutenant Wagner appeared right next to her, the customary stench of brimstone hanging in the air for a moment or two after his booted feet had touched the floor. He saluted, standing crisply to attention as he did so, his tail's flickering from side to side halted for a moment or two. Elisabeth told him to stand easy, and his posture returned to the slightly hunched, curving stance that he apparently favoured.

"You called, sir?" he asked, his yellow eyes looking curiously at his senior officer. Elisabeth nodded, gesturing to the humming shredder.

"Yes. It appears that we still have a problem with a traitor," she said sourly. "I almost ended up signing my own death warrant just now. I'd say that qualifies as a problem, wouldn't you say?" She watched Lieutenant Wagner's eyes widen in shock.

"A… death warrant? How?" he asked. "I thought all our official documents were strictly monitored?"

"So did I, Lieutenant, but apparently we were both wrong," Elisabeth said, sitting back down into the thickly-padded oak chair behind her desk. It was a remnant of Doom's decorations, and she considered it far too ostentatious and showy for her purposes. However, she supposed it would do for now, until she could find a decent, slightly more spartan replacement. "I want you to assemble a detail of psychics to scan the entire division – perhaps with a group of telepaths pooling their talents we can root out this worm more quickly. I don't want to be constantly looking over my shoulder because somebody in this region thinks that I would be a good addition to their trophy case." She pushed the mound of paperwork on the desk to one side, slid open a drawer, and withdrew her favourite Russian Army pistol. She had been issued with it a decade beforehand, and it had served her well since then, travelling with her to several war-zones and saving her life on more than one occasion. The grip was weathered and faded, the metal a little tarnished and scratched in places, but it had been far more reliable than any other gun she had used in a long time. Turning the weapon over in her hands, she remembered fighting a group of Mexican rebels five years previously, defeating them only by shooting out the kneecap of their leader and driving the rest of them into a headlong rout, from which they were picked off virtually individually by her troops. The same kind of ruthlessness would be needed here, she decided – there was nothing worse than having to wonder which of your supposedly-loyal comrades was going to drive a knife into your back, after all. Slipping the pistol back into the drawer, she closed it with a soft movement of wood on wood. Then, looking up, she saw Lieutenant Wagner still standing expectantly in front of her, apparently waiting for her to say something else. "You have your orders, Lieutenant," she told him in a short tone. "Carry them out, please."

The thick stench of brimstone that filled her office a second later gave Elisabeth hope that she would soon see the end of this ridiculous insurrection.

* * *

Kitty glanced up at the darkening sky and cursed. "Anybody got any idea where we can crash tonight?" she asked hopelessly. "We can't exactly check into a Motel 6 with Metal Mickey in tow, after all." She reached into her pocket and drew out her cigarettes, igniting one with the small, waning flame from her lighter and exhaling a long plume of bluish-grey smoke. Relief flooded through her bones as the smoke dissolved into wind-blown wisps above her head, even if the underlying reason for her agitation hadn't vanished within the time it had taken to light up. "Well?" she said, scratching her brow and taking another long drag. "Anybody got a plan? I hope so, because I'm fresh out of ideas here." Madrox walked over to the corner of the building that they were taking shelter behind for a moment or two, and scanned the street with a single glance.

"There," he said, pointing to a large, dilapidated apartment building that – despite its ramshackle exterior – seemed to be relatively intact. "That looks big enough and deserted enough for all of us." He turned and grinned hopefully at his squad-mates. "Lucky for us the Ivans have trashed so much of the city, huh?"

Hank rolled his eyes. "Jamie, will you ever stop trying to be funny? Shouldn't your drastically low success rate have tipped you off yet?"

"Nope," Jamie replied with a grin. "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Isn't that right, big man?"

"Sure, Jamie. You go right on thinking that," Cecilia cut in, shouldering her rifle and running her hands through her hair. Then she pointed to Jubilation. "I say we take this place. The kid needs rest."

"I'm fine," Jubilation snapped indignantly, narrowing her eyes to slits. Her exhausted demeanour and shaking hands seemed to belie that assessment, but she still made an effort to stand as straight and tall as she could, in order to try to prove it wrong. "And I'm not a kid."

"Yes, you are," Kitty told her, taking her to one side and grasping one of her shoulders firmly. "And yes, you do. We all do."

Jubilation scowled, but then nodded sullenly. "Okay," she said in a low voice, looking at the sidewalk in an attempt not to meet Kitty's gaze. Kitty squeezed her shoulder encouragingly and then directed Danny and Tony to provide covering fire while the rest of the squad moved over the street to their new roost. As she moved, she kept her gaze scanning either end of the horizon, hoping that a squad – or worse, a whole division – of Red Army soldiers would not come marching past the edge of the furthest building. She'd had enough of the Ivans for one day, and she really didn't want to have to start fighting her way out of a trap when all she wanted to do was lie down and sleep. When all of her squad were safely across the street, Kitty started directing defensive measures, assigning herself first watch as usual and making sure that her squad proceeded quickly towards sandbagging the place as much as they could, placing old doors up against the entranceway as a makeshift barricade and establishing easily defensible firing positions. Kitty knew that a good offence was always based on a good defence, and this was no exception. When the defences were all in place, she let the rest of the squad relax. She watched Tony Stark climb out of his massive armoured suit and hop down lightly to the dusty floor. He rolled up his jacket and laid it on the ground as a makeshift pillow, but Kitty stopped him before he could drift off to sleep like her squad-mates had done a few moments beforehand.

"Tony," she began. "Can I talk to you for a second?"

"Yeah, as long as it doesn't mean I get a lot less sleep than the rest of your guys," Stark said, raising an eyebrow and running his hands over his goatee beard. "What can I do for you?"

"I need you to leave your Iron Man suit behind," Kitty said bluntly. "I've been giving this a lot of thought, and I –"

"No," Stark snapped, suddenly furious. "That thing is too precious to leave it just anywhere. What if the Ivans got their hands on it?"

"We'll have to leave it behind if we want to get out of here alive, Tony," Kitty said, trying her level best to remain calm. "We can't keep out of the Russkies' way forever. And trying to keep this thing hidden is getting too difficult. You have to get to New York – you're more important than that robot. You can build another one there –"

"No!" Rage was building steadily in Stark's voice. Kitty hoped to God that he wouldn't lose it – that was the last thing she needed right now, after all. "Do you have any idea how long it took me to get the pieces for my Iron Man suit together?  _Fifteen years!_  Do you know how many Russkie bases Jubilation and I had to break into to steal all those pieces?  _Dozens!_  I'm not going to just leave that hard work behind, you hear me? You'll have to kill me first."

Kitty raised her eyebrows, and then reached into the bandolier strung across her chest, withdrawing a thin, slender stiletto dagger and spinning it around in her hands, making sure to let Stark see the cold, ruthless glint in her eye as she did so. Then she stepped closer to him and jabbed the point of the blade into his chin, hard enough to draw a thin trickle of blood. It oozed down the blade and caught the low light like a diamond. She smiled thinly as Stark's anger visibly evaporated, his eyes gone wide as dinner plates as he felt the blade pushing harder into his chin. Pulling the knife back and drawing her face close to Stark, she hissed "Don't tempt me, asshole. I'm just here because our mutual friend Logan asked me to be here – I could just as easily slit your fucking throat and leave your body for the Russkies; makes no difference to me, after all. Now I'll make myself perfectly clear: I'm not  _asking_  you to leave behind your little toy, I'm  _telling_  you. If you're worried about having all your hard work stolen by the Ivans, then we have enough demo charges to shred it beyond recognition. And I can guarantee you that there are enough Ivan bases in Long Island alone that you'll have everything you need to build another suit in a month and a half." She jerked her blade away from Stark's neck, causing him to gasp reflexively, and then nodded down at the floor. "Now get some rest. We'll need to be out of here early tomorrow." She watched him lie down on the hard ground, and then set to taking first watch, keeping a hand poised on the trigger of her rifle as she did so. Glancing up at the moon, its thin crescent shape not shedding much light on the ground, she rolled her eyes. More and more, she longed for the days when she was the one following orders rather than the one giving them. It seemed like there were fewer opportunities to be seen as an asshole, after all.

She sat silently for three hours, scanning the empty streets, and then roused Madrox to take over from her. Settling down to sleep, she dropped off almost instantly… and what seemed like only a few moments later was woken by Madrox's alarmed voice. Blearily, she opened her eyes and sat up. Immediately, she saw that Tabitha, the squad-member who had been assigned last watch, was unconscious on the floor, congealed blood coating a wound on her temple and streaking her face with coppery-scented trails. Of Tony and his Iron Man suit, though… there was no sign. Kitty screamed. "Fuck!" she howled. "I don't fucking  _believe_  this! That arrogant bastard's going to get the whole bunch of us killed, I swear…"

"What'd you say to him, Kitty?" Madrox asked, curious. Kitty shook her head and put two fingers to the bridge of her nose, trying to massage away the annoyance that was building there.

"I told him I needed him to leave behind his metal toy," she said, sighing. "I told him we needed to leave it behind to get him past the city limits. Obviously he didn't take too kindly to that, did he?" She turned to where Jubilation was standing, looking utterly confused and alone, and said "You know Tony better than any of us, sweetie – where would he be going at a time like this?"

"I don't know," Jubilation whimpered, scared tears beading at the corners of her eyes. "I don't  _know_. He's never left me alone like this before."

"Okay," Kitty said, trying to sound as sympathetic as she could through her frustration. "Okay, sweetheart, don't worry – we'll find him again, I'm sure." She moved in close and gave the younger girl a hug. "Everything's going to be fine, I promise." While she was hugging Jubilation, she looked over at Cecilia and Hank, as if asking them to try their best to keep Jubilation together. Hank nodded, and when Jubilation had reluctantly let Kitty stop hugging her, he and Cecilia took her to one side and began trying to keep her spirits up as best they could. It seemed like a losing battle, but Kitty thought they should at least give it a try, anyway. If nothing else, it might help Jubilation feel like less of an outsider, and with Stark nowhere to be seen, that was more important than anything else right now. She cleared her throat and nodded towards the door. "You guys stay here. I'm going to go do some scouting ahead. If you don't hear from me in twenty minutes, get the hell out of here, and don't look back."

Madrox nodded, and Kitty turned on one heel and walked out of the building's front door, crouching into an alleyway and then creeping through the shadows in an easterly direction, hoping to thread a path through any approaching Red Army units. She could hear a few isolated squads off in the distance, but they didn't seem like anything to worry about. And then she saw a knot of Red Army troops crowding around a glowing brass brazier that was sending puffs of grey smoke up into the atmosphere, warming their gloved hands and misting the air with their breath. The Russian conversation that she could hear meant little to her, as she'd only really ever learned the Russian phrases that would help her seduce somebody or to beg for mercy. Snatches of it made sense, but nothing else. She did a mental count and saw that there were at least fifteen soldiers in front of her, all of them armed and combat-ready, and she decided that to even try to engage them was a bad idea, even if she could phase around their bullets. She was just about to turn and make her way back to where she and the others were bivouacked when one of the soldiers spotted her spying on them, and yelled a warning to the rest of his comrades. Kitty was just about to phase into the ground and escape when a lithe, blond-haired man landed between her and the Russian soldiers. A combat knife appeared in both hands, and the man proceeded to dance among the Red Army troops, slicing through veins and arteries and throats with casual ease. Bullets seemed to pass through him as he moved, every shot fired seeming to have no effect whatsoever, until he was surrounded by a heap of dead and dying Red Army soldiers. Kitty couldn't help but feel her jaw hanging open as he turned and walked back towards her, wiping his knives on a scrap of uniform cloth. The man's disarming grin was totally at odds with the carnage that he had just created, and he winked at Kitty, before throwing away the rag and sheathing his knives.

"Saw you could do with the help," he said simply. "Hope you don't mind me stepping in and taking away your dance partners?"

"No," Kitty said, breathlessly. "No."

There followed an awkward silence, broken only by the man glancing up at his eyebrows and saying "You know, when I meet a girl, I usually like to know their name."

"Hmm?" Kitty said, before jerking awake with a start. "Oh! Kitty. My name's Kitty."

"Good to meet you, Kitty," the man replied, taking her hand and kissing its knuckles. "My name's Clint…"


	9. Instruments Of Destruction

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock folded her arms and raised an eyebrow. Before her, she could see several ranks of Doctor Pym's experimental soldiers, all of them fully kitted out for battle, their weapons and body armour fresh from the factories and ready for immediate use. They were all stood rigidly to attention, waiting for her to break the silence with a single word. She decided that she didn't want to do that just yet, and instead walked forwards to inspect the first rank of soldiers, her hands clasped behind her back. As she passed each trooper, she took in their uniforms and weapons, checking for any imperfections or breaches of protocol, and found none. Every one of the soldiers had polished their boots and weapons to parade-ground standards, and was standing as crisply straight as they possibly could. Elisabeth smiled briefly, once again impressed with the standard of training and discipline in this particular division of the Red Army. Von Doom had been a treacherous, egotistical fool – that much was certain – but he had at least instilled an exemplary standard of order in his rank-and-file troops. For that, she supposed, she had to give him some grudging respect. She stepped back again, clasped her hands behind her back and cleared her throat, readying herself to speak.

"You have been chosen," she began, "to represent Mother Russia as battlefield prototypes for our war against the last of the capitalist dinosaurs that are infesting this country and the rest of the world, and today will be your first mission. We have been tracking a group of rebels that are moving through this city along with Tony Stark, a valuable asset that High Command wishes to acquire. He has been using a suit of powered armour that can take on a tank and survive, and we are obviously anxious to examine this technology." She stepped forwards, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the men. "We have word, though, that Tony Stark has left the rebel group and struck out on his own."

One of the men coughed and raised his hand. "Permission to speak, sir?" he asked cautiously.

"Yes, Private Thompson?" Elisabeth replied. "Do you have a question?"

"Yes, sir," Private Thompson said, still looking very apprehensive about speaking. "How can you know that Stark has left the rebels?"

"The Crimson Commando has infiltrated the rebel group," Elisabeth said simply, enjoying the collective shocked gasp that rose involuntarily from the ranks. "He has been providing us with GPS locations of the rebels through his implanted hardware, and has been sending us covert reports through his communications devices. We know where the rebels are, and we know how many of them are in the squad." She gave the soldier a half-smile. "When the time comes, Private Thompson, I'm sure you'll enjoy taking the opportunity to see how your new abilities match up to his." Returning her attention to the whole group of men, she continued "You have your orders, gentlemen. Report to your commanding officers." Without another word, the soldiers marched out of the room, their boots ringing on the floor in perfect unison with each other, and Elisabeth found herself standing alone in the briefing room. Taking a moment to examine her nails, she closed her eyes and felt the telepathic centres of her brain coming to life.  _Lieutenant Wagner,_  she said.  _Give me a progress report._

 _The telepaths are working around the clock, Commissar,_  Lieutenant Wagner replied.  _There are several leads that they have picked up on, and they are currently pursuing them as far as they can. We should have some concrete targets within a day or so._

 _Good,_  Elisabeth replied, feeling a wolfish smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.  _Do you have anything else to report?_

There was a slight pause, and then Lieutenant Wagner said  _Yes, sir, I do… although perhaps you should see it in person._

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow at that. It wasn't like Lieutenant Wagner to be so cryptic about information, especially over a secure telepathic mind-link. Clenching her hands into white-knuckled fists, she found the doorway and proceeded to the nearest elevator. When she was inside, she pushed the button for the ground floor, where she knew Lieutenant Wagner would be waiting. The elevator hummed as it lurched into motion, the polished mirrors on its rear and side walls reflecting her puzzled expression back at her as she stood with her arms folded, tapping her foot impatiently. When the elevator came to a gentle stop, the abrupt cessation of motion momentarily making Elisabeth feel like she was being compressed in a vice, she marched out into the corridor, saluting other officers and soldiers without thinking, and then found Lieutenant Wagner as soon as she could, standing in a large meeting area looking extremely pleased with himself.

"You wanted to see me, Lieutenant?" she asked. Lieutenant Wagner nodded, and gestured over to the man leaning against the wall – a man she had only just noticed.

" _Ja,_  Commissar Braddock," he replied. "This man surrendered to us just hours ago. His name is –"

"Tony Stark," the man interrupted, pushing himself effortlessly off the wall and walking forwards to take Elisabeth's hand in a firm handshake. "Nice to meet you."

* * *

Clint crouched down beside the battered, dented shape of a trash-can and touched his fingers to the ground, raising them up to his nose and taking a sniff. "We can't go this way. Russkies are still close."

The girl who seemed to be in charge of this bunch of rebels, who'd introduced herself as Kitty, raised an eyebrow. "How can you know that just from smelling some dirt?" Clint smiled wolfishly, and indicated the patch of ground he had just touched, showing the girl the wet imprints of Russian Army-issue boots on the cracked sidewalk paving, the edges unsmudged by other trails of footprints.

"It's not just their scent that's fresh – the boot-marks they left are fresh too. Nothing's got mixed up with them yet, so that means that either this street never gets used, or the Ivans are close by." He stood, flexed his hands a little, and started padding down a divergent alleyway, which was strewn with garbage, small whirlwinds of dust and shredded paper whirling in the small, filthy depressions in the concrete ground. Turning slightly, he pointed in the direction he was moving. "You may want to follow me. This is the best way around those bastards."

"Is that right?" said another rebel, a rangy young man with tousled brown hair. His name was Jamie, Clint remembered, and he seemed to be sexually involved with the Kitty girl, if their body language was anything to go by. "And exactly how do you know that?"

Clint tapped his nose with an index finger. "Mutant powers," he said with a sly smile. "I can track Russkies all day with this. Just trust me, all right?" Turning back in the direction he had been moving beforehand, Clint allowed himself a small chuckle and began loping easily along the narrow alley, taking care to merely keep pace with the rebels behind him. The last thing he needed to do right now was give away the fact that his cybernetically-enhanced muscles were over twice as efficient as unaugmented flesh – he had done enough infiltration work to know that blending in was the most important thing here. He had no desire to end up on the wrong side of his new "friends" until it was absolutely necessary, after all. Glancing from side to side as the group came up to a T-junction, where another street tacked onto the alley's exit, he nodded to his left. "This way," he said with what he hoped was obvious certainty. He could smell the exhausts of several Red Army vehicles – mostly troop transports, he guessed – but he was confident that at this distance, the rebels would be oblivious to it. None of them seemed to be tracking by scent, which suggested in turn that none of them had enhanced senses, as he did. He allowed himself a brief, momentary smile, thinking that the job at hand would be a lot easier if he was the only one who could smell the trap closing.

"I wouldn't go any further," he said, beckoning the two lead rebels back and drawing the pistol he had stashed at his belt. Moving out in front of them, he flattened himself against a wall and looked around the edge of the decaying brick. "I thought so. There's a squad of Russkies out there," he hissed, raising the pistol and racking the slide. Jamie raised an eyebrow.

"I thought you were supposed to be finding us a way around the Ivans?" he asked sourly.

"I am," Clint snapped back, as quietly as he could. "This way there are only six Reds out there, instead of a whole fucking battalion. Now do as I tell you, and we'll get through this alive."

"Hold on a moment, pal," Kitty said with a certain degree of irritation. "No offence, but I don't know you from Adam – and I'm in charge here. Why are you the only one who can get us out of this?"

"Look," Clint replied, secretly impressed with the girl's strength of character, "I'm ex-Red Army, so I –"

At the mention of the words "Red Army", he found himself looking at a forest of gun barrels, each one accompanied by the clicking sound of a round being chambered, and Clint knew he'd have to talk fast if he didn't want to end up being the human equivalent of Swiss cheese. "Whoa, whoa,  _whoa_ ," he said, holding his hands up in a submissive gesture. "I said  _ex_ -Red Army. I got dishonourably discharged two years ago."

"Why? What'd you do?" said the compact, sleekly-muscular Hispanic woman who was currently holding a Magnum revolver aimed squarely at his chest – Cecilia, he thought he'd heard her called by the large, brutally-strong man called Hank.

"Stabbed a superior officer," Clint replied, shrugging his shoulders. "He told me to kill some kids and their parents, and I told him to go fuck himself. He threatened me with a court-martial, so I showed him just how much I didn't care by shoving my bayonet so far into his guts he was crapping steel for a month." He smiled wolfishly, as much through a remembered memory as the desire to look like an ex-soldier recalling some past event. After all, there was an element of truth in this lie; he  _had_  stabbed a superior officer once, a month prior to being selected as the Crimson Commando, for virtually the same reasons. The only thing that had saved him from a Siberian gulag was the Red Army's habit of using soldiers they considered already dead as experimental subjects. Waiting in his cell, he'd been visited by high-ranking Army officials and offered a way out of his predicament. Needless to say, he'd grabbed it with both hands.

Still, these rebels didn't need to know that…

"Hold on. Why weren't you executed?" Cecilia asked. "Sounds like something the Reds would definitely kill you for."

Clint shrugged again. "Got Alaskan penal service for a full year – I think they figured a year in the ice was enough for an assault charge, especially since the guy lived. Then they kicked my ass out and slammed the door behind me." He paused. "It's not often I feel grateful to the Ivans, but that was one time I did feel like I owed them. Now do as I say, and we'll get through this." Nodding at the young man with the machine gun, he said "You – I'll need you to lay down some covering fire for us. With any luck, that'll rattle the Reds enough that we can get close to them."

The girl with the scarred face snorted in contempt. "Why should we break cover at all? I can snipe every one of those bastards from here."

Clint muttered a curse under his breath, inhaled deeply, and said "Are you sure? The Reds are faster than you think… Tabby, is it?" The girl nodded, still looking utterly scornful.

"Yeah, that's right. And just because I'm not a professional soldier, sweetheart, doesn't mean I can't shoot straight-like. Watch and learn." She shouldered her way to the front of the group, dropped to one knee and lined up her rifle, its long barrel apparently lovingly maintained. Then she squeezed the trigger six times, her aim shifting almost imperceptibly with each twitch of her finger. Clint watched, suitably impressed, as the six Red Army soldiers barely had time to register their surprise before they were all dead on the sidewalk, bloody splatters of bone and brains decorating the walls of the buildings behind them. Tabby sprang to her feet and dipped forwards in a brief bow. "See what I mean?" she asked, grinning broadly. Clint noticed that the scar on her face twisted as she did so, giving her smile a strangely sinister quality to it. "Three, two, one – all gone." She clicked her fingers. "Just like that."

"Of course, we could have just told you she'd done that once already on this trip," Kitty said with a brief smile, "but a demonstration works better, don't you think?"

"I guess it does," Clint replied, still secretly astonished at the standard of the girl's shooting. The last time he'd seen that kind of marksmanship had been when he'd been schooled in sniper tactics during his Crimson Commando training, and it made him wonder if perhaps this girl had  _actually_  been ejected from the Red Army, and just wasn't telling anybody.

 _Save your questions for later,_  he told himself angrily. He decided that was good advice…

* * *

Elisabeth blinked as she took in the man standing in front of her, pulling her hand out of his grip with surprise still rattling around her skull like a pinball. She wasn't used to this feeling – telepathy did rather take the sting out of life in that regard, after all – and it had put her on her guard already. She adjusted her cap, folded her arms across her chest slightly defensively, and said "So you're Tony Stark, are you? To what do I owe the pleasure of your company?"

Stark raised his eyebrows briefly. "Let's just say I had a change of heart and wised up," he said. "The rebels didn't want to keep my Iron Man suit, so I decided to take it to somebody who would."

"I… see," Elisabeth said, secretly elated that such a technological leap had fallen into her hands so easily. "Where is the suit? I'd like to see it for myself, before I decide whether to hand you over to High Command so that they can debrief you. And believe me, they would be considerably less gentle than myself." She injected just the right amount of menace into her voice, just to remind Stark who was in command here, and was suitably pleased when she saw him swallow involuntarily for a moment or two, before he composed himself and gestured towards the direction of the vehicle depot.

"I had to leave it outside," he explained. "They wouldn't let me bring it into the building itself. I understand that, but I don't –"

"You don't need to understand," Elisabeth snapped, impatient. "We do as we must. Now please, I'd like to see this machine before the end of the day."

Nodding, Stark turned and walked out into the corridor that led down to the depot, his hands clenched into fists and apprehension dripping off his mind with every step. Elisabeth followed after him at a far more relaxed pace, with Lieutenant Wagner taking care to keep one step behind her at all times, clutching a clipboard and a specially-designed pen that was easier for his two-fingered hands to use, and busily scribbling out notes as he walked.

It was the smell that hit Elisabeth before her eyes could register what was in the vehicle garage – a thick, enveloping scent of petrol and oil that filled the entire length and breadth of the largely enclosed area. Tanks, half-tracks and armoured personnel carriers, all in various states of repair, occupied the bays organised along each of the three walls. Pieces of engines and armour plating littered the ground, amidst glittering puddles of oil and water. The stained water dripped down into gullies at the end of each bay, carrying the dirty oil down into the base's waste disposal system and feeding the water purification mechanism at the same time. And then she saw it.

Standing at the end of a row of T-90 tanks, Stark's Iron Man suit was completely at rest. Elisabeth took in its haphazard armour plating and weapon systems, noting as she did so that, with only a few exceptions, all of it seemed scavenged from Soviet equipment. Walking forwards so that she was stood in front of the Iron Man suit, she pulled off one of her gloves and reached up to touch the machine's gun, feeling the cold metal under her bare fingertips. The multi-barrelled cannon seemed to have been torn from the nose of a MiG-29 fighter jet and wired directly into the suit's right arm, making the main weapon exactly like the rest of the machine's patchwork design – which in turn made it seem rather dangerous to operate. She would have to have some specialised engineers take a look at it later, she decided, to see whether the mechanisms could be duplicated a little less haphazardly. Turning, she marched back to where Stark was standing, pulling her glove back on as she did so. "This… is a unique piece of work, Mr Stark," she said, trying to keep her voice neutral.

"I assure you, the engineering is sound," Tony Stark said, mirroring her thoughts. "Every system in the Iron Man suit works perfectly."

Elisabeth cursed inwardly, realising that her facial expression had inadvertently given her feelings away. "That's as may be, Mr Stark," she began, "but it isn't exactly a uniform design, and I doubt it can be easily reproduced. I suggest you consider this your prototype, and speak to Dr Pym about reserving some research space. I have plenty of manpower available to help you, if you want it."

"Thanks, but I think I'll work better if I do this alone," Stark said with a disarming grin. "Too many cooks, and all that."

"I suppose so," Elisabeth conceded. "However… I do insist that you start briefing my mechanics on how to repair that thing in case it gets damaged. I'd hate for my new investment to be in vain, after all…"

* * *

The room was dark, its one light bulb hanging cold and dead from its cord. Two men were sitting inside it, one with their hands folded in their lap, and the other playing with a dagger, nervously spinning it in his fingers and occasionally using it to dislodge dirt from the cracks and furrows in the small table that stood between the two of them.

"How much time do we have?" said the one with the knife.

"Not much," said the other. "Commissar Braddock might still be talking to that Stark guy in the vehicle depot, but I hear tell that she's trying to use psychics to track us down."

"Then we have to move quickly, don't we? General Doom asked us to help him deal with that bitch, and she's still here." Dirt and varnish peeled off the table as the knife scoured its way through the weathered surface like the prow of a ship through water.

"You ever think maybe we should just give up? I mean, Doom's dead and she's in charge. Maybe we should just –"

The knife stabbed into the table's surface. " _No._  This is what he ordered us to do, and we're gonna do it. You think she'll accept an apology if she finds us out? I don't. It's Doom's way or the highway, buddy."

"You're an idiot, Wade," the other man said, with a shrug. "Okay, let's do it. Don't have anything to lose, right?"

Wade Wilson grinned. "That's the spirit, Dave, old pal. We'll have this mission finished before you can blink."

"If you say so, Wade," David North sighed. "If you say so…"


	10. Exit Wounds

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock felt the breeze blow past her face, gently brushing her skin with warm gusts of air as the armoured personnel carrier she was travelling in trundled slowly through the streets of San Francisco. She watched the numerous members of the proletariat on the sidewalks and in the shops that adjoined them freezing in their tracks as the heavily armoured vehicle moved along the road, barely missing the cars parked along its route. She enjoyed the sensation of apprehension and fear that she could feel wafting upwards from their minds, as if they were afraid that this mighty column of metal and human military power was coming for them and them alone. She smiled cruelly, watching them almost visibly cringe as her gaze passed across them, and then ducked back inside the armoured shell of her transport. Unholstering her pistol, she began trailing her gloved fingers across it gently, as if trying to calm it before the battle that she knew was coming, and then slipped it back into its holster, clipping the clasp closed and then taking her seat at the front of the transport. From there, she could see the half-dozen or so troopers who had been allocated this vehicle as their method of deployment, and basked in the feeling of pride and awe that she could sense coming from every last soldier. Clearly they were all honoured to be a part of this mission, as well as to be in the same vehicle as a hero of the Revolution such as herself. Elisabeth wasn't a vain woman – or at least she liked to think she wasn't, a thought which she knew pushed her further towards the very thing she professed not to be – but she invariably enjoyed the admiration her troops showed for her. She had to admit, though, that while they were under her command, her soldiers were very important to her, which was probably why they liked her so much. "Never leave a man behind" had been her motto as a rank-and-file trooper, and while she had learnt not to be so naïvely optimistic as a commander, the idea itself was sound. It was always better, she thought, to cultivate positive images about herself than to be viewed as a monster who threw her troops into a meat grinder just because she could. Of course, if that was the only option, then she would have very few problems with implementing it, but otherwise she preferred not to be perceived as an unrelenting butcher; at least not in public. She offered the nearest soldier, a Private Jameson, a small smile of encouragement, trying to quell the wavering nerves she could feel knotting in his guts without the aid of her powers. Immediately she felt a sudden glow of appreciation spreading through his body, and she said "Remember, Private: a soldier is only as good as the man standing next to him, so I'm expecting the best from each and every one of you men today. You'll make me proud, won't you?"

"Yes, sir," Private Jameson said, his voice still wavering a little. "Of course, sir."

"Good. That's what I like to hear," Elisabeth replied. "The Revolution needs bravery if it's going to succeed." Sitting back in her seat, she put a hand to her temple and pushed her mind out of her skull, looking for the presence of the Crimson Commando. After all, without him, this exercise was going to be a spectacular waste of time and manpower, and she hated to waste anything. It took a few moments for her to thread her way around the numerous minds that lay in between her and the soldier she was trying to contact, but once she had found him, the connection went as taut as a mooring line.  _Report, Mr Barton,_  she said.  _Where are you at the moment?_

 _Tell you the truth, sir, I'm kinda busy right now,_  came the reply.  _Can we talk_ after  _I've finished this?_

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow at his cryptic response, and used her link to propel her mind into the Crimson Commando's brain for a split second, so that she could see and hear what he was seeing. All around him she could see and hear the rebels he had infiltrated, and she saw that they were moving through some sparsely-populated streets away from the urban centre of the city. Occasional passers-by caused him and the rest of the squad to duck back into cover as if they were hiding from the Red Army itself, but otherwise they seemed fairly untroubled by any sort of opposition. She tweaked his brain a little in order to make him look around at his companions, as if she were remote-controlling a security camera, and she saw a heavily-scarred girl with short, wavy blonde hair whose apparently perpetually-grinning face was covered with dirt, blood and grime, a young man who was carrying a pilfered heavy machine gun, a baby-faced teenager who looked barely old enough to pick up a gun… and then she saw something that made her fists clench in fury. The other members of the squad were rebels she had seen before, in New York. The rebels Madrox, Reyes and McCoy were of little consequence, but seeing the girl she'd identified as Kitty Pryde made her blood boil. She wasn't used to having almost certified kills slip away from her, and the Pryde girl had been one of those. That alone was reason to send the little bitch to a labour camp, Elisabeth decided sourly. Then a thin, sadistic sneer crossed her lips.

Perhaps a labour camp was too kind. Perhaps, instead of making her work her hands to the bone in Alaska, the girl would be of more use elsewhere. All it would take would be a few surgical cuts to her psyche, after all, and she would become little more than ill-formed clay, ready to be remoulded into something that the Red Army could use to its heart's content. Elisabeth smiled to herself. Yes, that seemed like an appropriate revenge for what that wretched girl had done to her. And doing it now would (to a small degree at least) make up for not having done so when the two of them had met the first time.

 _We are going to talk_ now _, Crimson Commando,_  she said forcefully, returning her mind to her subordinate with just a touch of difficulty.  _Can you have your new friends move towards our position?_  Transmitting some co-ordinates through the psychic link, she felt Barton digesting the information thoughtfully.

 _I think it'd be better if you came to us, sir,_  he suggested.  _We're close to the city limits, and you're asking me to tell these guys we need to take a detour back inside the Red Army cordon. I don't think that would go down too well._

 _Very well,_ Elisabeth replied, feeling her jaw tense involuntarily.  _In that case, try to delay their movement as much as you can. My troops will be with you shortly._

 _Yes, ma'am,_  Barton said.  _I'll do my best. One last thing, though: we're in the sewers at the moment. If I can get them to go above ground again, I will, but you should be prepared to send some troops down here to flush them out._

 _I see. I suppose we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, then._ Elisabeth cut the psychic connection quickly, before she picked up her pistol and racked the slide, the familiar action lending her a little relief after the unpleasant surprise of seeing Kitty Pryde again. Putting the gun back in its holster, she clenched her fists once more and laid them in her lap, wrapping her left hand around her right and squeezing so that all four knuckles cracked loudly. Switching her grip, she did the same to her other hand, and then flexed both sets of fingers briefly.

"Sir?"

Elisabeth looked up, to see Lieutenant Wagner looking back at her with an expression of concern on his fur-covered features. "Yes, Lieutenant?" she asked in a clipped tone.

Lieutenant Wagner raised his eyebrows for a moment, his yellow eyes glittering in the low light of the armoured personnel carrier. "Are you all right, sir? If I may be so bold, you seem a little restless. Can I be of any assistance?"

"No, Lieutenant, I'm fine," Elisabeth said. "My contact with the Crimson Commando was… interesting, put it that way. I'm looking forward to our rendezvous even more now than I was before. Tell Comrade Stark we will be needing his services in order to back up the volunteers of Project Sickle."

" _Ja,_  Comrade-Colonel," Lieutenant Wagner said obediently, and then touched the comm-bead at his collar, opening up a channel to the communications system that had been recently installed in Tony Stark's metal behemoth. The Iron Man suit had been extensively modified and upgraded by Stark (who had finally allowed Soviet mechanics to help him after one of the ammo feeds on the suit's arm cannon had buckled) so that it was fully combat-ready, its patchwork circuits and weapons now functioning at least somewhat efficiently. "Comrade Stark, Commissar-Colonel Braddock requires that you deploy immediately behind the squad and provide them with covering fire. Do not engage the rebels on your own unless otherwise advised. Is that clear?"

Elisabeth heard a muffled reply on the other end of the radio link, and smiled with welcome amusement. From her brief contact with the arrogant American traitor, she knew that that order had to be chafing at his sizeable ego.  _Good,_  she thought, stifling a laugh.  _Perhaps that will lend him some humility. He certainly needs it._  Reaching into a pocket of her greatcoat, she took out a small hammer-and-sickle pin and attached it to her coat's black lapel, just above the buttonhole. She didn't really hold with the idea of good or bad luck, but she liked to have something with her that reminded her of the reason for which she was fighting this war.

* * *

Clint shook his head angrily as Commissar Braddock's mind slid out of it, like a blade slicing its way through the edge of an open wound. Squeezing his eyes shut for a second, he forced as much of the mind-witch's thick, oily taint out of his mind as he could, but he could still feel traces of her lingering on behind his thoughts. He wondered for a second whether everybody she talked to that way felt like this, or if she'd done it on purpose, just to let him know who was really in charge here. Grimacing, he took a deep breath and muttered "I'm stronger than you, you bitch."

"I'm sorry, what did you just say?" the girl called Kitty said icily, looking at him through the corner of her eye. "Do you have a problem with me, Clint?"

"What?" Clint said, and then silently cursed himself for his carelessness. "No, I was talking to myself."

"Is that right? Something you're not telling us, 'Mr' Barton?" Madrox replied, raising an eyebrow. "Or is being a bitch just a weekend thing?"

Clint sighed. "Okay. You know how it is when you get bad memories surfacing just when you don't want them to, right? This was one of those times. It was my ex-wife I was talking to, if you really must know. She always did know how to ruin my fun."

"Really. Well, try to keep your private conversations with your ex-wife private, please," Kitty said, putting her hands on her hips. "I don't need you getting into a one-sided argument with her just when we need you to be quiet, okay?"

"Sure, chief. Whatever you say," Clint replied, throwing her a theatrical mock-salute. "I'll try to keep her under control." He closed his hand around the grip of his pistol again, and began following Kitty as she paced through the sewer tunnel to which the squad had retreated for ease of mobility (now that the Iron Man suit wasn't with them, Kitty had thought there was really no reason for them to travel above ground for any longer than necessary), somehow avoiding the rats and garbage that swirled around the boots of the other rebels. It was only when he saw one of the infrequent breezes stir up a sheet of newspaper and then blow it right through her head that he realised how she was doing it, and at that point he realised just exactly why the rebels needed this girl. With abilities like that, she was a priceless asset to whoever she was fighting with, and he wondered whether he should ask Commissar Braddock if he ought to spare her life because of that one simple fact. He sidestepped a clutch of squealing rats, kicking lightly at the ones that got too close to his boots, and moved up beside her, keeping his muscles as tensed as he could. If they ran into a particularly adventurous squad of Red Army soldiers, there was no telling how messy things could get down here in the tunnels, with the conditions as cramped and unpleasant as they were. Touching his fingers to the grimy floor and then raising them to his nostrils, he sniffed his fingertips, trying to determine any recognisable scents (engine oil, boot polish, gun-metal, and so on). He cursed when he could find nothing, but then went over the co-ordinates burned in his mind once again. They were more or less straight ahead, so finding the "enemy" was less important than simply walking forwards and waiting for the trap to be sprung. He wiped his hand on his fatigue pants, and then nodded in the direction he was facing. "This way," he said shortly. "I think this is the best way for us to go."

McCoy raised a shaggy eyebrow. "How can you be certain? There isn't anything to distinguish this particular tunnel from all the others we've encountered, after all."

"Trust me," Clint said, shrugging, and then he tapped the side of his nose with a fingertip. "The nose knows." Kitty shrugged, an expression of pragmatic thoughtfulness crossing her face for a moment or two.

"Lead the way," she said, ushering him forwards with a sweep of her arm. Clint nodded without another word, and then proceeded down the tunnel, trailing his fingers briefly along the crumbling brick wall as he did so. Behind him he could hear the young girl Jubilation griping loudly about the notion of having to move through the sewer again, and he grinned to himself. Despite the fact that these people were technically the enemy, he found himself liking the little brat. She wasn't afraid to speak her mind and didn't care whether or not it was appropriate to do so, which appealed to him a great deal. He hadn't heard that kind of spiky spontaneity for a long time; not since he'd joined the Red Army, in fact.

He'd feel sorry when the time came to kill her; of that much he was certain.

* * *

"Damn it, Wade," David North muttered, gritting his teeth as his companion busily twisted wires around soft clumps of plastic explosive. "How the hell do you think you're going to get that much C4 past Commissar Braddock's security? I don't think they'd just let you waltz in and stick it under her desk, do you?"

"Oh, ye of little faith," Wilson replied, not taking his eyes off his work for a second. "I'm not going to go anywhere  _near_  her office. The thing is, Commissar Braddock has a routine she sticks to as if her life depended on it. Well, soon it will." He chuckled crazily to himself. "See, every day at eight-thirty in the morning she goes to the gym here at the base, and stays there for an hour and a half  _without fail_. She only breaks that routine for really good reasons – so I'm thinking we plant a few pounds of the wonder putty under the floor of the gym the night before, and then set it off while she's getting her morning sweat on. Sound like a good idea to you?"

"I think it sounds like an insane idea," North said bluntly. "Unfortunately, it also sounds like the best idea we've come up with so far – and with Braddock's psychics breathing down our necks, that's what we need." He paused, and ran both of his hands through his hair. "Unless you  _want_  to get caught, of course."

Wilson shrugged. "It'd be a new experience – but no, I think I'll pass. Now... why don't we get started?" With an underarm swing, he threw a block of plastic explosive towards North, who caught it one-handed, scowling all the while. His grin widened when he saw North's pained expression, and he spread his arms wide. "Come on, Dave; it'll be fun, I promise."

"Guess your definition of 'fun' and mine don't really match up," North replied, gritting his teeth. He squeezed the lump of explosive in his hand, leaving deep furrows in its soft surface, and took a deep breath. "All right. Let's do this."

"That's the spirit!" Wilson chuckled. "With that attitude we'll be all set before you know it!"

"You're an idiot, Wade, you know that?" North said with a snort, looking of the window at the smoky grey clouds flitting across the skyline.

"Sure I do," Wilson said, before adding "Hey, at least I admit it."

North raised his eyebrows for a second. Wade did have a point, he supposed. "I'm going to go get something to eat. You want to come?" he asked, knowing what the answer would be even before he spoke. Wade shook his head and began concentrating on his explosives again. Shaking his head slightly, North left the small room and began walking down towards the cafeteria area. It wasn't much, but at least he could get a half-decent cup of coffee and some halfway-edible food. He folded his hands into fists in order to keep the shaking he could feel in them to a minimum, and increased his pace until he was in the confines of the cafeteria itself. Walking up to the counter, he picked out a pre-packaged sandwich that contained cured ham and processed cheese, and ordered a strong black coffee. Handing over a few roubles to the woman at the till, he picked up his food and made his way over to a free table, sitting down and pulling a folded piece of paper from the top pocket of his jacket. It was a letter from his mother, which he'd not had time to read since it had arrived, full of the usual statements that he'd come to expect from his parents – how much they missed him, how much they wished he would come to visit them when he was on leave, and if they were ever going to see him get a wife and children. He had to admit, though, that robotic as their sentiments were, they were still of great comfort right now.

"I'm sorry, do you mind if I sit here?"

North snapped his head up, startled, and saw a statuesque blonde woman standing in the aisle next to his table, who he'd never seen before. Given the size of the facility here, it was plausible that she had simply never had cause to venture into his unit's area of the base, but it still didn't sit too well with him, and he made sure to keep his internal defences up just in case. "I haven't seen you around here before," he said, truthfully, and the woman smiled.

"I've just been transferred here from New York," she said. "Commissar Braddock wants me to help with some of the more complex science projects here, apparently." She paused, and took a bite out of her roll. "But since the scheduling here is a little... slow, I have nothing to do today. So... I thought I'd take a walk and start getting to know people here. What's your name, soldier?"

"Lieutenant David North," he replied.

"Pleased to meet you, David," the woman said with a broad smile, as she extended her hand. "My name is Emma. Emma Frost..."


	11. Locked & Loaded

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock wrinkled her nose in disgust at the stench that filled the tunnel which she and her ten-man squad were now walking through. Above her, she could hear the crunching footsteps of Stark's Iron Man suit as it followed her at street level. Once again, she wondered how on earth Stark had managed to keep something that conspicuous hidden for so long, and decided that she would definitely have words with the security co-ordinator for this city when this particular problem had been dealt with. Putting a finger to her earpiece (since Stark's new telepathy-dampening cockpit protection – which she had only discovered when they had left the base – had given her a nasty headache the first and only time she had tried to transmit to him psychically), she said "Do you have to be so bloody noisy, Comrade Stark?" She heard that infuriating chuckle of his on the other end of the link, and all of a sudden the noise seemed to vanish. On the other end of the link, Stark began an exasperatingly lengthy explanation of how his suit's sonic inhibitors were able to easily dampen the sound of the metal behemoth's footsteps, but Elisabeth took her hand off her earpiece and heard the transmission cut out almost instantly, enjoying the notion that Stark would be highly annoyed at not being able to show somebody how tremendously intelligent and capable he was for once. Returning her attention to the tunnel ahead of her, she saw the point man of the squad hunker down on his haunches and start sniffing the air like a wolf catching a scent. He turned back towards the rest of the squad, enthusiastically telling them that he could smell the rebels approaching, and Elisabeth was sure that she could see slight traces of foamy spittle at the corners of his mouth as she sensed the man's mind blossoming with animal emotion, all bloodlust and eagerness for the kill. She drew her pistol and followed after the rest of her squad, who she hoped would show a little more self-control when the time came to actually engage the rebels in combat. After all, this was only the latest in a series of concerning moments since she had led her squad down here – some of her squad had wanted to charge ahead of the others when they had dropped down the manhole, and would have done so had she not barked an abrupt order for them to halt, and reinforced it by freezing their muscles psionically. Then there had been the moment when two of her soldiers had looked like they were about to start yelling at each other for the right to be the point man, as if they were wolves arguing over who would be the leader of their pack. She wondered briefly if it was the atmosphere of the sewer getting to them, but then discounted that theory as absurd – clearly, Doctor Pym's selection of test subjects must have been limited to the lower end of her soldiers, the thugs, rejects and killers who were thoroughly expendable. She supposed that she should have words with him about his selection process in the future, since she didn't relish the prospect of losing control when it mattered the most. Then again, if they were the best instrument for this mission, there was nothing she could do about that.

Lieutenant Wagner appeared at her side as the squad jogged swiftly down the tunnel, following the soldier who had first caught the scent, and gave her a concerned look. "Comrade-Colonel?" he said cautiously. "What will we do when we have intercepted the rebels?"

"Kill them," Elisabeth replied bluntly. "And if we can't do that by ourselves, we'll drive them up to ground level, and that arrogant idiot Stark will tear them to pieces with that metal monstrosity of his. Either way, Comrade Wagner, they're dead men." She blinked as a thought struck her suddenly. "Lieutenant, I want you to move ahead of the squad. Teleport back here if you find anything... interesting. I don't want these men running into any booby-traps – certainly not in the state they're in. I'm not in the mood to watch all of Dr Pym's hard work go to waste, after all."

"Ja, Comrade-Colonel," Lieutenant Wagner said, and in an instant he was gone, a puff of pungent vapour all that was left in his place. Elisabeth wrinkled her nose as the smoke wafted down the tunnel past her, its thick sulphurous stench almost making her gag.

Suddenly, up ahead of her, she heard one of the men howling, and she snapped her head up to see the point man running virtually on all fours, his hands flexing open and closed, almost like claws extending from and retracting into their sheathes, and his rifle hanging off his shoulder, forgotten. The bloodlust she had sensed only a moment before was almost boiling over in his mind, and Elisabeth knew she had to control him before he gave them all away. Raising a hand, she clenched it tightly, the action giving her mind a focus as it closed tightly around the point man's brain. Gurgling in shock, he lost his balance and sprawled into the filth on the floor of the tunnel, before pushing himself back to his feet, his teeth still bared and his hair wild, like an animal.

Elisabeth moved up through the ranks of the men, her face a mask of fury, and stood in front of the point man, who from his uniform she saw was called Private Whitman, and then punched him hard in the gut, knocking him right back to the ground, where he lay wheezing and struggling to catch his breath. "You idiot!" she hissed, enraged. "Do you want the whole world to know we're coming? This is supposed to be a surprise attack – how do you think those rebels are going to react if they hear you screaming at them?"

Private Whitman coughed, pushing himself to his feet again and spitting a bloody mouthful of phlegm onto the ground as his lip sealed itself almost instantaneously. "Sorry, ma'am," he said, ashamed. "I don't know what came over me."

"I'm sure you don't," Elisabeth said, her voice dripping scorn. "Now get back in line – you obviously can't be trusted to take point any longer." Looking over at the lithe, statuesque form of Corporal Walters, she said "You seem more appropriate for the position, wouldn't you say, Corporal?"

"I'll trust your judgement, Commissar Braddock," Corporal Walters replied with the merest hint of a smile, and moved to the head of the squad, her rifle slung at her waist and her gaze scanning the tunnel ahead of her with a calm, measured efficiency. Elisabeth cursed herself for not using her in this capacity before – she was virtually the only soldier in the squad who hadn't succumbed to the curious bloodlust that the other soldiers were experiencing, but since she had stripes on her arm, it had seemed pertinent not to risk an officer, even a non-commissioned one like Walters. And since Walters was still capable of subtlety, it seemed sensible to give her some more responsibility.

For a moment, Elisabeth wondered if Corporal Walters was being spared the loss of control her other soldiers were experiencing simply because she was a woman, and Doctor Pym's serum was affecting her in a slightly different way. She didn't recall seeing anything like this when Corporal Walters had been training after being injected with the new serum, either, which leant some credence to the theory, but Elisabeth decided that such ideas would only be fully tested when contact was made with the rebels and the bullets started flying.

Something to look forward to, she thought, as she watched Corporal Walters padding softly down the tunnel ahead of her. Then we'll see how good I am at predictions.

David North looked across at the beautiful woman who had just commandeered the seat opposite him, who had introduced herself as Emma Frost, and couldn't fail to notice how immaculately-groomed she was. Her short blonde hair was arranged in a functional bob and held in place with a couple of clips in order to stop it falling into her face, and her fingernails were clipped short with immaculate precision. Her face was delicately rouged, which he found especially unusual for a Red Army officer, and her cat-like blue eyes glittered brightly in the harsh light of the mess hall. He coughed, realising he might look as if he was staring, and said hurriedly "My name's David – David North. Nice to meet you." He stuck out his hand a little too quickly, which Emma took with a broad smile, obviously realising the effect she was having on him.

"Nice to meet you too, David – David North," she chuckled. "So how long have you been stationed here?"

"I came here about five years ago," David said, with a genuine amount of honesty. "I was transferred from Canada and ended up in an infantry unit here. I go where I'm told, after all."

Emma smiled faintly. "Don't we all," she purred, her eyebrows flickering upwards for a second or two as she paused to take a sip of coffee from her steel mug. "If it wasn't for the fact that I'm supposed to be working with Henry Pym, I'd be really resentful that I was moved; my last project was something that really interested me, so I didn't enjoy being taken away from it."

"What kind of project was it?" David asked, curiosity sparking in his mind despite himself. Emma sighed, and took another brief sip of coffee, pausing to lick a stray droplet off her lower lip.

"I was working on a way to map the human genome. High Command wants to know if we can artificially induce mutant powers in our soldiers – apparently the few natural superhumans that the Red Army has managed to locate aren't enough for their tastes, so I was supposed to help them find a way to create their own. After all, Dr Pym's current research might be paying dividends right now, but who's to say it won't go wrong in the future? It's always nice to have a back-up plan, don't you think?"

Got that right. Maybe I should mention that to Wade and see where it gets me, David thought bitterly. Aloud, he said "I wouldn't know – I've never had a plan go wrong on me yet." Emma laughed then, a delicate, musical sound, and reached out with a hand to squeeze David's arm, much to his surprise.

"Of course you haven't," she said. "I know you men don't like to admit you're ever wrong, so I'll let you have that one for now."

"Thanks," David said, trying to keep his confusion as veiled as possible. "I'll bear that in mind, I guess."

"Good boy," Emma said, wrinkling her nose at him, before she glanced at her watch and frowned blackly. "Damn it," she cursed. "Look, I have to get back to work now, but if you're not busy later, perhaps we could continue this discussion? I'd like to get to know somebody around here through doing something other than just memorising their faces and name tags. What do you say?"

"I'd love to," David replied, hearing the words coming out of his mouth almost before he thought about saying them. "I've got an extended period of R & R at the moment, so I don't have any kind of real duty for the next eight days." Emma grinned.

"Great. I'll see you here at six p.m., then?"

"Sure. Looking forward to it," David said, still not knowing why he was agreeing with her when his situation was so precariously balanced, and then watched Emma walk away, her hips delicately swaying as she picked her way effortlessly through the throng of off-duty troops. When she was gone, he got up from his seat after finishing his sandwich and returned to where Wade was busily assembling a couple of blocks of plastic explosive, complete with detonators and timers. David shook his head as he saw that Wade's mouth had a little bit of drying froth at each corner, as if he had got a little too interested in what he'd been doing, and that he hadn't appeared to notice when the door had opened behind him. David took one step into the room, and Wade instantly swung round, a pistol appearing in his hand almost out of thin air. When he saw that it was nobody suspicious, he raised the gun and smiled a slightly unhinged smile.

"You're lucky I wasn't in the mood to shoot someone, Dave. Enjoy your meal?" he asked, slipping the pistol back into the waistband of his fatigues and turning back to his work.

"Yeah, as a matter of fact, I did," David replied, flexing his knuckles a little and beginning to examine one of Wade's explosive works of art, holding it up in front of his face between finger and thumb. "As a matter of fact, I met somebody, and she's going to meet me later today."

What looked like abject panic flashed across Wade's face like a lightning bolt. "What?" he asked, incredulous. "Are you serious? What if she finds us here?"

"She won't," David reassured him. "I'm not so dumb that I'd lead her right here and gift-wrap this whole operation for her. Even if she was KGB, she couldn't have figured out anything from what we talked about."

Wade scowled. "Don't bet your life on that. Seriously, man, you can't do this." He stalked forwards and held his pistol out in front of his face, training it on the centre of David's chest before shifting aim down towards David's groin. There was an audible click as his thumb turned the safety catch off, and David could suddenly feel cold, sticky sweat creeping down the back of his neck. "Don't do it, or I swear I'll blow your balls off right here. Lot of good you'd be without those, right?"

There was a moment of tense silence before David held his hands up in submission. "Okay, I won't go through with it. Satisfied?"

"For now," Wade replied, raising his pistol and flipping the safety back on, before holstering it and turning back to his explosives. "Don't give me a reason to change my mind – we're too close to finishing this to let anything get in the way..."

Kitty wiped her brow and then checked her rifle's magazine agitatedly, for the tenth time in as many minutes. The closer her squad got to the end of the sewer tunnel, the more nervous she was becoming, and that was a feeling she didn't enjoy at all. Soon they'd be forced to go back above ground, and that was where the problems would start. If they survived the trek across the country, she'd have to explain to Logan that Tony Stark had bolted from her rescue mission, and that she'd had to pull her team out for their own safety, even without their target. That was something she didn't relish – the old man was a good friend, but he also had a vicious temper. Kitty had lost count of the times she'd seen him slashing at the walls of the current rebel base with those weird bone claws of his, leaving long, jagged furrows the width of her finger in the crumbling brickwork, and had also lost count of the times she'd felt relieved that he was doing that instead of killing good people. The resistance was dangerously low on manpower as it was, especially superhuman manpower, and the last thing it needed was for Logan to be slaughtering his own men for making a mistake. She shook her head and noticed for the first time how tightly her fingers were clasped around the barrel and grip of her rifle, her knuckles white under the thinning, dirty gloves she wore. She unclenched them with some effort, and then glanced over at Danny and Tabby, who were engaged in a game of some sort, each of them taking turns to aim at cockroaches and pull the triggers of their safety-locked weapons.

"Knock that off right now," she hissed. "Take your safeties off, both of you. I don't want you idiots to come up short if the Ivans show up. It's bad enough we have Russkies around every corner; we don't need to shoot ourselves in the foot as well. Got it?" Chastised, Danny & Tabby bowed their heads meekly and slid their safety catches off with muffled clicks. "Good," Kitty said, before turning back to look down the tunnel. Up ahead, it curved sharply to the right, a small tributary of sludgy filth trickling down the trough in the middle of the bricks making up the floor. Kitty held up a hand and clenched her fist, bringing the squad to a halt. "Wait," she said in a low voice, suddenly suspicious. "You guys wait here. Jamie, can you keep these guys under control for a while?"

"I can try," Madrox replied, swinging his rifle up and aiming at an invisible dot on the wall in front of him. He looked over at Clint, who was leaning casually against the wall of the sewer and flipping a one-rouble coin over and over with his finger and thumb. "Hey, laughing boy – I want you up here with me. Cover the tunnel behind us; I'm sure you don't want any nasty surprises coming to bite us in the ass any more than I do, so get to it." He punched his fist into his open palm and another Jamie popped into existence beside him, before leaning against the wall and mimicking Clint's previous pose. "Besides, if anybody's going to goof off here, it's going to be me." Kitty stifled a laugh, and then crept away down the tunnel, keeping herself intangible as a precaution. What she saw up ahead of her made her blood run cold – it was a blue-furred demon in a Russian army uniform, his pointed tail trailing along the side of the tunnel as he walked cautiously down it, a pistol clenched in his two-fingered right hand. His gleaming yellow eyes focused on her at almost the same instant, glowing in the dark like hot coals, and then he vanished into thin air just as Kitty opened fire. A cloud of foul-smelling smoke was the only thing that Kitty managed to hit with her wild spray of bullets, and it made her sick to her stomach to realise that that... creature... probably had at least a couple of soldiers as back-up. She had no intention of letting the Soviets get her, though – not when she was this close to escaping this city and getting back to the underground. It was just a question of covering her tracks a little better now, that was all.

Howling noises from a little further down the tunnel made her snap her head up. She would have mistaken them for wolves, if there hadn't been occasional words dropped in amongst the screams. What the hell's going on? she thought, before she heard a pair of gunshots ring out from behind her. Figuring that what was going on behind her was far more important than what was coming down the tunnel, she turned and ran back to where she'd left her squad... only to run right into Clint, who sprinted right through her phased form, a wisp of smoke still trailing from the barrel of his rifle. "Wait!" she called. "Wait, you stupid asshole! You don't know what they've got back there –"

"Kitty!" she heard Madrox call, finally, and she moved rounded the corner to find her squad kneeling round Danny's prone body. Two fist-sized holes were punched in the boy's abdomen and chest, and they were leaking blood faster than Cecilia's meagre supply of medical gauze could staunch it, a sticky crimson pool forming around his pale, motionless form.

"Come on, kid, help me! Don't give up!" Cecilia urged him as she fought to stop the bleeding. "For fuck's sake, Danny, help me! I can't do this by myself!" Throwing aside the gauze, she started to pump his chest, hoping to get his heart started again, before blowing air into his blood-rimmed mouth and repeating the process a few times before she realised nothing was happening. She rocked backwards onto her haunches and ran her hands over her tear-streaked face twice, taking a few deep breaths as she did so. Placing a hand on Danny's chest, she murmured something in Spanish and then covered his face with the hood of his coat, before pushing herself to her feet and drawing her .45 pistol. "Goodbye, kid," she rasped hoarsely. "I'll kill him for you."

As she did so, Kitty turned to Madrox and said "What –"

Madrox shook his head, before giving her the answer she knew she was going to get anyway. "Clint was with the Russkies all along – he said as much before he killed Danny. He was probably feeding them information the entire time he was with us."

"Jesus," Kitty breathed, putting a hand over her mouth and nose for a second. "He must have been laughing his ass off at how fucking stupid we all were."

"So what are we gonna do?" Jubilation said, her dirty face glancing down the tunnel at the approaching howls. "Should we go back?"

"No, we can't do that either," Kitty replied. "That bastard probably got the Ivans to cut off any kind of retreat, too, so going back's no good either."

"So what, then?" Jubilation asked, her eyes looking increasingly frantic as the howls got closer. Kitty unhooked one of her pistols from her waistband and threw it to the trembling girl, whose flailing hands somehow managed to catch the gun without dropping it.

"We fight," Kitty said simply. "Stick with Cecilia or me, and you should be fine. Use that if you need to."

"Are you nuts?" Jubilation asked, incredulous. "I don't know how to use a gun!"

"Point it at something and pull the trigger," Kitty snapped. "Come on, everybody –"

"Well, well, well," said a horribly familiar voice behind her. Kitty turned slowly, to see Commissar-Colonel Braddock standing in the tunnel in front of a snarling mass of bestial-looking troopers, with the blue-furred demon-man stood at her right and Clint stood at her left as she posed in a theatrical bow, her peaked cap in one outstretched hand. "I do believe we meet again, Comrade Pryde. I trust you won't try to run away from me this time?" She leaned over towards Clint and kissed him deeply on the lips, her gloved hands cupping his face as she did so. "Clint here was kind enough to lead me to you, after all, so I'd hate to throw away all his good work..."


	12. Feeding Frenzy

Kitty walked a few metres away from her squad, watching as Commissar Braddock strode towards her, her gloved fists clenched and her face set into a triumphant smile. The hammer-and-sickle insignia on the woman's peaked cap glittered as traces of dulled, septic light fell across it, and her greatcoat billowed slightly in the breeze blowing through the tunnel. She watched Commissar Braddock's gaze moving from one member of her squad to the next, knowing that they were being marked as useful either as mind-wiped soldiers or as half-starved hard labour, and made sure to keep her mind full of defiant thoughts. From her past experiences with this woman, she knew that she had to keep up resistance on two fronts, and she had to wonder how long she would be able to maintain that effort before she and the rest of her soldiers were overwhelmed. Commissar Braddock came to a halt so close to Kitty that they would have been almost nose to nose, had Kitty not been at least a head shorter than her, with that same sadistic, victorious smile still draped across her face. She looked down at Kitty as if she was almost impressed with what Kitty had achieved, and reached up with her right hand to touch Kitty's chin, turning Kitty's face ever-so-slightly to the left. "You know you have no chance against me, don't you?" she whispered directly into Kitty's ear.

"More than you think," Kitty spat back defiantly. She drew one of her knives from its sheath on her belt and plunged it into the Commissar's belly – only to find that she was stabbing thin air. She shook her head, realising that she had been talking to an illusion as she saw the Commissar, the real Commissar, standing next to Clint and the blue-furred demon-man, with her arms folded and a disappointed look on her face. She shook her head.

"Wrong answer, Katherine," she said thinly, and then she simply raised her right hand above her head and clenched it tightly closed. Beside her, the bestial soldiers howled with delight and charged, their weapons hanging uselessly at their waists as they hurled themselves forwards. Kitty fended one off with the butt of her rifle, smashing him in the jaw with the heavy wooden stock and sending him sprawling into the filth on the floor of the sewer. He skidded a little, kicking up a small wave of dirty water, and then he sprang back to his feet, a delighted look in his eyes as the bruise on his face shifted through several colours as it healed. He wasted no time then, exploiting Kitty's shock with a slashing blow of his open hand towards her thigh, his fingers curved like talons. Kitty couldn't tell what he was trying to achieve, but she phased anyway, letting him pass straight through her and out the other side. Once he was clear, she went solid again and kicked him in the back of the head, knocking him to the ground again. She watched him splashing into the dirty soup on the ground and heard him cursing in broken, ragged Russian – and then he whipped his head around to look at her, and Kitty's eyes widened in shock as she saw that his eyes were now a brilliant green, and glowing with anger. She heard the vague sound of his uniform tearing as his body began to grow, his muscles bulging and ripping through his jacket as he growled in rage. Stunned, Kitty tried to fire a burst from her rifle but the man was inside her field of fire before she could pull the trigger, grabbing the weapon and crushing it in his hand, ripping it away from her and throwing the ruined, twisted remains across the tunnel. As he moved, Kitty could see his new form turning livid green, with similarly-coloured hair sprouting down the length of his spine and along his arms. At the same time, large, curved fangs were pushing their way out of his mouth, their tips extending about halfway down his chin, and his fingers were splitting so that long greenish-black claws could emerge from their tips. He howled loud and long, and was poised to spring at her when one of Madrox's dupes hit him in the chest with a burst of fire on full-auto. The beast-man staggered back a pace, but the bullets did little else except bounce off his skin, crumpling almost penny-flat and scattering on the ground.

"Holy shit," Kitty breathed, reflexively ducking a swipe from the creature's right hand and trying to aim one of her knives at its face. In its desire to strike, it had left itself defenceless, and Kitty seized the opportunity, diving forwards and throwing the blade into the creature's face, right at its left eye. It hit the monster's eyeball dead centre... and snapped. Kitty barely had time to register the shock of seeing the ruined stump of her knife bouncing off the beast-man's face before it grasped a chunk of loose paving and hurled it at her. It passed straight through her phased form and hit another of the Russian soldiers in the back of the head, knocking him to the floor and giving Tabitha and Jubilation a momentary lifeline. Kitty could see that Tabitha, at least, was covered with bites and scratches up and down the length of her arms. They weren't serious, but they were deep enough to make her bleed, and Kitty didn't like the way that she was starting to wobble on her feet."Fall back! Get out of here!" she yelled. "Move!"

Madrox drew up beside her, his weapon still spraying bullets uselessly towards the horde of Russian beast-soldiers, and threw her a worried look. Kitty could see now that every single one of the Russian troops had changed in the same way as the one which had attacked her, snarling and drooling as they loped towards their prey, their clawed hands flexing open and closed. She realised that there wasn't time for her to ponder what was going on – her first priority was getting her squad away from these monsters without any of them getting hurt any more than they had been already. Looking around she did a quick head-count and saw that every one of her squad that had still been alive when they'd first encountered the beast-creatures had remained that way, although they all looked much the worse for wear. Cecilia naturally didn't have any open wounds, but she looked tired and drawn, and Kitty guessed that her force-field had been sorely tested by one of those monsters. Hank, meanwhile, had just as many bites and scratches as Tabitha, along with a ragged, nasty-looking cut that ran down the length of his forearm, which he was attempting to hurriedly bind with his teeth and his good hand, using a scrap of cloth he'd torn from his sleeve. Jubilee, she saw, was relatively unscathed, and she was gratified to see the girl occasionally stopping to fire the pistol she'd given her at the monsters pursuing them. She wasn't hitting much at all, but Kitty knew that she'd been exactly the same the first time she'd fired up a gun – she remembered the recoil of her father's .38 pistol almost breaking her eight year-old wrist – so she wasn't going to condemn her for that. Right now, she was proud of the girl for ending her reluctance to participate in this mission, since she needed every last pair of hands to help her now. Not for the first time, she made a mental note to ask Logan for a mind-reader next time she went on one of these trips. The amount of trouble the Ivans had caused her with their mind-witches should have been enough to clue her into the fact that they were all-too-necessary these days. Worry about that later, she cursed. Focus on not fucking dying first. "Jamie!" she yelled over the sound of the gunfire around her. "We need to get above ground. Maybe we can scatter these things and then regroup later!"

"Sounds like a plan to me," Madrox said, glancing angrily at his rifle as it cycled dry. Letting it fall by his hip, he pulled out two pistols from holsters at his waist and began firing them as he ran. "I really don't want to end up as green-doggy chow. Where's a flame-thrower when you need one?"

"You saw those things," Kitty snapped, her footsteps splashing as she passed through a puddle of muck. "I shot one in the fucking eye and it still kept coming. You think a little bit of fire is going to stop them?"

"Probably not, but who said I wanted to use it on them?" Madrox said, nodding to his left. "If we could make a napalm barrier between them and us it'd buy us a little time."

"I'd prefer plastic explosive," Kitty replied. "Pity we didn't bring enough this time." She ground her palms into the trigger grips of her guns and gritted her teeth. "Fucking Stark!" she hissed. "If it wasn't for his worthless traitor ass we wouldn't be in this situation!"

"We should have killed him the moment we saw him," Tabitha suggested helpfully over the approaching sound of howls. "All we were supposed to do was keep him out of the Russkies' hands, right? Can't get much more successful than that."

"Shut the hell up, Tabitha," Cecilia grunted, her force-field clearly still causing her pain. "You want to help, shoot something..."

Kitty was about to tell the two women to stop arguing when she noticed a sliver of light coming from the roof of the tunnel. It was a manhole cover, and it looked like the seals were open. She felt a shiver of relief run up her spine and pointed upwards. "Head upstairs, guys. I'm thinking those things won't be able to track us as well when we're in the open." She reached the ladder that led to ground level and ushered the rest of the squad up through the open cover. "Come on, guys. Let's get outta here."

When the rest of the squad had made their way up through the hatch, Kitty grabbed the lower rung of the ladder and then hauled herself up through the hole. She tried for a moment or two to get her breathing down to a manageable level, when a familiar voice caused her blood to run cold.

"Put your hands up, Miss Pryde, or you'll lose them." She looked up and saw the familiar shape of the Iron Man suit looming in front of her. It looked sleeker and more uniform than it had done the last time she'd seen it, with knots of fresh steel piping and plating bolted onto numerous places on the suit's hide – and there was a large hammer-and-sickle emblem painted on the right side of the cockpit. When Tony Stark noticed her shock and horror, he grinned savagely. "What can I say? I realised I was backing the wrong side. I spent years building this thing, and you wanted me to just... throw it away? Where the hell do you idiots get off telling me what I can and can't do with my own damn property?" A dangerous light was beginning to shine in his eyes now, and Kitty half-expected the gun-barrels on the suit's weapon-arm to start spraying out bullets at any second.

"What?" Jubilation said, her eyes confused and unfocused. "What?" She looked abruptly shell-shocked, as if the sight of her former companion dressed in the colours of the Soviets was too much for her to bear. "Why?"

"I'm... sorry, Jubilation," Stark replied, a small fraction of compassion needling its way into his voice. "I told the Russians that I didn't want them to hurt you, if that makes it any better. They'll be kind to you, I promise –"

"Don't try and get out of this, you bastard!" Jubilation shrieked suddenly. "This heap of junk matters more to you than me? Fuck you!" She raised her pistol in both hands and screamed wordlessly as she fired three shots right at the cockpit of the Iron Man suit, the bullets barely grazing the protected glass in front of Stark's face. "Fuck you!" she yelled again, tears running freely down her cheeks. "I –"

Snarling and howling coming from the manhole cover stopped her in her tracks, and she swung around to see one of the green-furred animal-men hauling itself up onto ground level, its hide damp and tiger-striped with sewer muck. It ignored the sudden hail of bullets that bounced off its skull, and focused its baleful green glare on Kitty as more of its pack appeared from underground. Growling, it charged her with both of its clawed hands open and ready to strike. It covered the distance between Kitty and itself in a fraction of the time that Kitty had expected, but she was still phased when it raked her with its talons, the sharp edges passing harmlessly through her ghost-form and punching deep hollows into the ground. For a moment, Kitty thought it would pull up half the sidewalk with its paw as it struggled to free itself – and that was when she saw a chance to even up the score a little. Grabbing one of the two grenades on her bandolier, she hefted it in her right hand, pulled the pin and ran towards the monster as it growled and snapped at the rebels around it. When she had closed with the beast, she aimed the hand which held the grenade into the centre of its abdomen, and let go of the grenade's spoon as she passed through the monster's back. "Fire in the hole!" she yelled, bracing herself for an explosive splatter of flesh and bone... but it never came. She heard the muffled thud of the explosion, but all she saw when she turned back to look at her target was a slightly unsteady-looking monster with a vaguely disorientated expression on its face. It looked ready to fall over, but it wasn't dead by any stretch of the imagination.

Jesus Christ, she thought in despair, what does it take to kill one of these fucking things?

The creature she'd tried to obliterate quickly shook off its confusion and then refocused its attention on her, drool spilling out of the left side of its mouth. It was about to leap at her when one of its squad-mates slammed into it from behind, sending it thudding to the ground as the newcomer howled with bloodlust of its own. It sprang to its feet then, enraged, and leapt straight at the newcomer, having apparently forgotten all about its former prey. Kitty gaped as the two former comrades-in-arms thrashed and howled at each other, their wickedly-curved claws gouging long, deep furrows in each other's hides. Kitty felt a rush of relief flood through her body and was about to yell out to her squad what to do in order to thin out the pack of beast-men when she heard Tabitha crying out wetly, her agonised voice almost turning to a gurgle. Kitty swung around to see the girl clutching her stomach where one of the monsters had opened it up from one side of her belly to the other – and then watched helplessly as the beast shoved its arm elbow-deep into Tabitha's body, tearing out a handful of her intestines and beginning to stuff the glistening red meat into its mouth as she collapsed into a tangled, boneless heap, a deep crimson halo beginning to form around her. When it had finished slurping down its handful of meat, it turned its bloodied muzzle in Madrox's direction and growled deep in its throat, its gore-stained teeth bared and the leg of Tabitha's corpse still clutched in its left paw. Predictably, one of the other creatures pounced on the free meat, causing the creature that had made the kill to cuff it across the face with a fistful of claws. Just as before, the two beasts started fighting each other, their foes forgotten in the blink of an eye.

"Jamie!" Kitty cried, throwing her pointed finger towards the advancing soldiers. "Make some more dupes – maybe we can bait these things into killing each other!" Madrox gave her a disbelieving look, but quickly pounded his heel into the ground four or five times, creating a screen of multiple Madroxes around him.

"This is going to hurt me a lot more than it'll hurt you, you know," he said sarcastically, before his dupes began to shout and wave their arms energetically at the remaining beast-soldiers in order to attract their attention. The creatures swung their heads around quickly, licking their lips as they saw Madrox's dupes simply walking towards them with their hands open and extended in a gesture of surrender, while Madrox himself moved back towards where Kitty was standing as quickly as possible (if history had taught them anything, it was that any mass-sacrifice of Madrox's dupes would cost him dearly, at least in the short-term). It didn't take long for the beast-men to take advantage of the dupes' compliant state, gutting them with fangs and claws and making the original Madrox fall to the ground clutching his stomach and screaming in pain. When she was sure they were occupied, Kitty turned her eyes to Cecilia, who was looking even more ragged and drained, although she was still without a scratch. Hank, meanwhile, was cradling another impressive bite-mark on his injured arm, the bulky muscle there punctured almost to the bone once more by sharp, elongated canine teeth. Kitty pursed her lips, realising that he wasn't going to be much use if those wounds were not treated properly sooner rather than later, and was about to call out to them when she heard the sound of the Iron Man suit's gun-arm finally beginning to spin up, the gears of the weapon screeching as they started loading its fat, explosive-tipped ammunition. Evidently Stark had had orders not to risk hitting any of the beast-soldiers, but now that they were more concerned with slaughtering Madrox's dupes, or with fighting amongst themselves over the leftovers, he had finally been given the go-ahead to open fire. Kitty spun around, grabbed Madrox by the arm and dragged him to his feet despite his mewling protests.

"Come on, stud, let's get out of here," she whispered to him, trying to keep the urgency out of her voice. "If you can do this for me, I promise I'll have sex with you every night for a month."

Madrox looked at her with bloodshot, watery eyes, and coughed a trickle of pink saliva. "You owe me more than that, Kit," he said hoarsely. "You're not the one getting eaten out there."

"It's okay, Jamie," Kitty said, grasping him a little more tightly as she began to phase. "We'll get out of here, I promise."

She felt a cold weight suddenly appear in her free hand then. Looking down, she saw that Madrox had pressed a grenade into it. "You had the right idea earlier," he said, spraying his chin with blood as he spoke. "Stark isn't invulnerable."

"What –" Kitty began, before the realisation of what Madrox was suggesting sank in. Helping him to a standing position, she let him lean painfully against a nearby wall, the blood from his mouth dropping onto his fatigues in steady trickles of red, and then started to sprint towards the Iron Man suit as it stomped forwards through the bickering mass of the green-furred beast-men. Stark spotted her coming, and immediately swung his gun-arm towards her, stitching a long line of pockmarks into the road ahead of him. The bullets passed harmlessly through her phased form, and she took a running leap towards the cockpit of the suit when she was close enough, pulling the pin on the grenade as she did so. Ghost-walking her way through the bulletproof cover, she found herself face to face with a suddenly-terrified Stark. "Hi, Tony," she said, waving the grenade at him before she opened her hand and dropped it on the floor next to his feet. Quickly retreating back to where she had left Madrox, she watched him scrabbling desperately for the grenade, or perhaps an escape hatch, before the resulting detonation painted the inside of the cockpit glass a messy shade of crimson and sprayed deadly shrapnel in all directions. "Bye, Tony," she spat, her voice thick with contempt. The explosion grabbed the attention of the remaining creatures, their fur thick with the green blood of their former comrades, and they began to swarm towards the wrecked mechanical behemoth, attracted by the sickly, raw-meat scent of Stark's pulverised remains. Madrox managed half a smile then, as Kitty slung one of his arms over her shoulder.

"See?" he said, coughing wetly. "You should listen to me more often."

"If she did that, Jamie, she'd probably have ended up dead a dozen times before now," Hank said flatly. "Now, I suggest we get out of here before the Ivans send in any reinforcements..."

David North felt so vulnerable now that he thought he might as well have been naked. He had just opened a maintenance panel in a corner of the floor of Commissar Braddock's private gymnasium, and Wade was packing three individual bundles of plastic explosive into it, setting the trigger mechanisms almost lovingly as he did so. They were timed to go off at eight the following morning, when the Commissar would almost certainly be in the middle of her morning workout. He was still very concerned about the outcome of this mission – since General Doom had been dead for a while now, who was going to fill the void left by the Commissar's death? Clearly, it would be a gamble as to who was drafted in to replace her – David wondered whether they would be replacing one problem with an even bigger one, but for all this plan's insane faults, he had to admit he'd trusted General Doom's intentions. The man might have been a power-hungry warmonger, but he'd known how to play a political game – and when to use brute force to win an argument. The Commissar was a worthy officer, that was certain, but she was playing a dangerous game using Doctor Pym's crazed theories to engineer super-soldiers for the Red Army. If High Command couldn't see that, then perhaps it was for the best that she be forcibly removed. General Doom would be proven right in death, if not in life.

David raised his eyebrows for a moment or two. That was likely not to be any comfort to the general, he decided.

"What's that, buddy?" Wade piped up cheerfully. "You say something?"

"No," David replied. "Why?"

"Oh, just felt like making conversation," Wade said, shrugging. "You know how it is – sabotage is much more fun when you can talk about the football. You see the game Saturday night?"

"No," David hissed again. "Look, shut the fuck up for once, will you? Someone might hear you..."

"Not scared, are you, Dave?" Wade asked, turning back to look at him for the first time since they'd entered the room. "Look, nobody knows we're here. I saw to that myself. Anybody who might come near here's been reassigned until later in the evening." He tapped his temple, chuckling quietly. "I'm not just a pretty face, you know – sometimes it pays to know your way around a computer."

"Are you finished?" David said impatiently. "Are those things set?"

"Set like concrete," Wade said. "They'll go off at eight tomorrow morning, unless I detonate them before then." He held up a small wireless detonator unit. "This thing can make them blow from a mile away. Either way, Commissar Braddock isn't going to leave this base again, unless it's in a box." He closed the panel and bolted it securely, before getting to his feet and hefting the spanner in his right hand. "We'd better get out of here before we get some of those other personnel I mentioned asking difficult questions."

"Good idea," David muttered, feeling his feet take him to the door more quickly than he'd originally intended. He closed his hand around the handle and pulled it open – and found himself looking right into the barrel of a .38 pistol.

"Hello, David," Emma Frost said. "I think you'd better show me just what you were planning to do to Commissar Braddock, don't you?"


	13. Raw Meat

David North stared dumbly at the blonde woman in front of him, who had fixed his gaze lazily with her ice-blue eyes and placed her pistol directly against his sternum. He could feel its cold steel through his uniform, and he knew that at this range, even a small weapon like that could mangle his innards quite comprehensively, leaving him to cough up his own lungs before he bled to death. The woman, Emma Frost, was the one that he'd talked to in the mess hall, but he knew that he hadn't said anything about this to her – he wasn't that stupid, no matter what Wade might have said before this situation arose, so how could she have found out about this? Desperately he tried to find any kind of clues he might have inadvertently dropped, but he kept coming up completely empty in every possible way... until it dawned on him with horrifying clarity, causing his stomach to churn unpleasantly. She was a  _telepath_. She had to be. He realised then that his moment of inspiration must have been obvious to her, as she smiled thinly and nodded, with a look of satisfaction draping itself over her coldly beautiful features.

"Well done, Comrade North," she smirked. "Commissar Braddock set me the task of rooting this little conspiracy out while she was busy doing her job elsewhere, and so here I am. You gave me quite a chase, I'll admit, but I'm afraid the game is up now. I'd shoot the two of you right here and now, just for the hell of it, if Commissar Braddock didn't want me to keep the two of you alive so that you could be court-martialled and executed later." She paused, raising her eyebrows thoughtfully. "It's such a shame you couldn't let General Doom's death be the end of all this, you know. I'd have thought that seeing the old fool get thrown off a building might just have convinced you otherwise, but apparently your concept of loyalty outweighs your common sense." She snorted scornfully, her face returning to its original disdainful expression. "In any case, you'll soon be as dead as the old man, and I shan't mourn you."

"Is that right?" Wade said, rising to his feet and drawing his pistol while Frost had hers pointed directly at David. "You'll have to kill us first." He raised his gun in a fraction of an instant and tried to empty the magazine into Frost's side before she could switch her aim, but before he could even tighten his finger around the trigger of his weapon, he was collapsing to the floor, clutching his head and screaming wordlessly. His gun clattered to the ground a few metres away from him, thrown there by his wildly convulsing hand. David swore for a moment that he could see sparks of some kind of energy wreathing Wade's skull, but as quickly as they appeared, they vanished, leaving Wade curled into the foetal position on the floor of the gymnasium. Curdled blood from his nose, ears and eyes dripped on the pristine floorboards, pooling in a bright corona around his face. As he lay on the ground groaning, Frost moved over to him, keeping her gun trained on David as she did so, and stood over his prone body with an expression that bordered on total physical disgust.

"Don't tempt me," she said, her eyes narrowing. "I could still kill the two of you and claim it was self-defence, you know. Even if she does want the satisfaction of watching you two die, I doubt Commissar Braddock would care enough to double-check whether or not I was telling the truth." Wade tried to push himself up at that moment, but was knocked back to the floor as Frost's boot connected brutally with his sternum. "That was for not doing as you were told," she spat. "Get up and follow me." Hauling himself to his feet, still coughing a little, Wade reluctantly slouched through the door ahead of Frost and David, a pained expression crossing his face as he glowered at the psychic woman. Wheezing a little, he held a hand to his chest where her boot had almost caved in his sternum, a small trickle of blood dribbling down his chin as he did so.

As the three of them walked down the corridor, David started to curse his loyalty to both the corpse of General Doom and to the apparently clinically-insane Wade. Why hadn't he listened to his first thoughts of self-preservation? And why hadn't he thought with his head instead of his privates when Frost had shown up? Common sense should have told him not to trust anyone, but, like a typical man, he had fallen foul of a pretty face, and it had been his undoing. He clenched his fists, feeling the skin of his knuckles tightening uncomfortably, but kept his gaze on the corridor in front of him just in case the mind-witch was eavesdropping on his thoughts.  _If you're listening, bitch, you can go to hell._

"Oh, come on now, Comrade North, don't be so rude," Frost said, confirming his worst fears. "And yes, you should have been more careful. Still, I can hardly blame you for that – I  _was_  altering your perceptions a little so that you'd be more receptive to me. Standard KGB infiltration technique, I think you'll find."

"Why? Were you afraid I wouldn't find you attractive if you didn't?" David spat back scornfully. Perhaps this sort of thing cut both ways, and he could knock her off-balance a little...

"Please don't insult me, David," Frost said, an icy tone coming into her voice and letting David know that he'd succeeded, if only a little. "You haven't had a woman speak to you the way I did in years. I could have been covered in warts and grown an extra head while we were talking, and you still would have been putty in my hands."

"You're really not my type," David replied. "I'd have just fucked you and then left you alone before you woke up. Simple casual sex, that's all it would have been. You're nothing special, Frost. Just another KGB honey-trap with a gun." He felt the barrel of her pistol jab into his spine, and despite the cold feel of the barrel as it pressed against him through his shirt, he felt a stab of satisfaction that he was getting to her. And then her other arm snaked around his throat and pulled him close to her, close enough that he could smell the delicate perfume she was wearing, its faint floral scent totally at odds with her uniformed appearance.

"I know what you're doing, you traitorous bastard," she hissed, spittle flecking his ear. "You think I don't know these techniques inside out? I've been doing this since I was eighteen. You think I'm going to let a damned _amateur_  beat me?"

There was another click then, to his left. David looked over to see Wade holding a small single-shot self-defence pistol directly to Frost's temple. It was attached to an armature that extended up into his sleeve, and had evidently been spring-loaded for use as a last-resort weapon. The weapon looked too small to do real amounts of damage at any range longer than this – but this close up, it would do plenty. "Don't move, sweetie," Wade snarled, his eyes full of barely-suppressed rage. "Drop the gun.  _Now_. And if you try that mind-stunt again, chances are my finger's going to pull this trigger anyway, and that would mess up your pretty face real bad, wouldn't it?" Frost scowled at him as he ushered her away from David and up against the wall, taking her gun from her and then kicking it down the corridor. It skittered into a corner, ricocheted off the wall, and came to a dead stop almost in the centre of the passageway.

"You wouldn't dare," Frost said, in a tone that indicated that even she didn't believe what she was saying. "You wouldn't dare."

Wade smiled crazily, his eyebrows arching almost to the middle of his forehead. "Really? You think so?" he said, pressing the gun against the bridge of her nose, right between her eyes. David swore he saw her flinch a little as the gun barrel touched her skin, which gave him an odd sense of satisfaction. "Care to test that theory, huh?"

"You idiot," Frost said, scorn dripping off her voice as a renewed confidence seemed to flood into her. "Where would you go?"

"Hey, uh, correct me if I'm wrong, Comrade Frost," Wade began, "but you're the only one who knows about us other than Commissar Braddock, aren't you? If that's the case, I'd start being polite if I were you." Then, without taking his eyes off Frost, he said "Go get that gun, Dave. Time for us to get out of here."

"I'll find you," Frost hissed. "As soon as you leave, I'll find you. You're dead, both of you."

"Is that so?" Wade chuckled, and then cracked her across the face with the butt of his gun, sending her sprawling to the ground. "I'm already dead, honey. You don't scare me." He kicked her in the stomach with relish, evidently enjoying the opportunity to extract a little bit of vengeance from the situation, and then knelt by her unconscious form, pressing his pistol to her temple. Seeing what he was about to do, David grabbed his elbow and stopped him from firing, causing Wade to glare up at him with a crazy light in his eyes. "What the hell are you doing, Dave?" he hissed. "This bitch knows who we are! We have to kill her, or she'll rat us out!"

"I know," David replied simply, "but I'm not going to let you kill her. Not like this, not when she can't even defend herself."

"Are you serious?" Wade said as he looked at him in disbelief. "You really think she'd do the same for you?"

"No," David said, "but then again, I'm not her. I've had enough of this, Wade. We should just get out of here while we still can."

He could see Wade struggling with indecision for a moment or two before he pushed his pistol back into his sleeve and then opened his hands. "Okay, Dave, we'll play it your way this time," he said, through clearly gritted teeth. "But this is all on your head, understand? When they catch us, you're on your own..."

* * *

Commissar-Colonel Elisabeth Braddock ran a finger slowly down the soot-blackened side of the remains of the ruined Iron Man suit, examining the residue that coated its tip with detached interest and a lingering sense of frustration. The meat-splattered innards of the suit had been cleaned thoroughly when the recovery crews had arrived to salvage what they could of the wreckage, but there was still a decidedly organic odour clinging to the twisted metal and melted plastic coating of the cockpit, a stink of liquefied flesh, bone and faeces that had made her want to gag when it had first hit her. Fortunately, it was dull enough now that she could safely ignore it, which she felt extremely relieved about. She turned away from the wreck in disgust, leaving the technicians in the vehicle bay to continue dismantling the salvageable parts of the suit, in the hopes of duplicating the intact technology and improvising the rest – the notion of large numbers of the heavily-armoured suits as support for ground troops was too tempting to ignore, after all, especially with the rebellions she'd heard about in South America becoming more and more frequent. As she left, she saw one of them carrying away the Gatling cannon that had formed the suit's weapon arm, the connection wires and ammo feed trailing along the floor as the scrawny man struggled to keep hold of it. Rolling her eyes, she put a hand to her temple and planted the idea of asking for help into his annoyingly stubborn brain. Instantly, he called out to one of his colleagues and the two of them carried the cannon to wherever it was they were supposed to be taking it, preventing any damage to its precious circuitry. Elisabeth wondered why someone would risk something so important for the sake of saving some of his male pride – but then she sighed, realising that she had her answer already.

Walking towards the lift in the corner of the vehicle bay, she tapped the button that called it a couple of times, chewing her lip thoughtfully as she did so. When the lift arrived, she stepped in and pressed the button that would take her to Doctor Pym's laboratory. She tapped her foot as the lift hummed upwards gently, and watched the digital number above the keypad on the wall clicking steadily higher until the lift reached the floor that she wanted, pinging softly as the doors opened. Clenching her fists, she walked towards the door of Pym's lab, wondering what she was going to find on the inside.

As the door opened, she had her answer. Doctor Pym was hunched over the body of one of the test subjects, most of whom had been sanctioned as soon as they had returned to human form a few hours earlier. The corpse had been slit down the middle, and Pym was busily examining a collection of extracted internal organs, including the man's heart, lungs and liver. "Subject's internal organs appear to have suffered no ill-effects from the transformation," Pym said into a small tape-recorder, clicking it off and placing it back on the work-surface next to him as he began slicing open the man's small intestine with great interest.

"Busy, Doctor?" Elisabeth said, making Pym almost drop his scalpel in shock. Turning to face her, he nodded sheepishly.

"Yes," he said. "I'm looking at the bodies of the test subjects – perhaps I can find out what triggered that transformation, and build in some kind of suppressant into the next batch."

"I wouldn't bother with that, Doctor," Elisabeth said, scorn dripping off her words as her hand moved to the catch on the holster of her pistol and popped it open. "Perhaps I should sanction you like I did these soldiers. I see no reason to continue with this research or with you, if you're just going to keep wasting my men like this."

"Wasting your men, perhaps," Pym replied, a little more confidently, although he was still mindful of the gun at her waist, "but not your women, apparently." He turned towards an annex of the lab and called out "Corporal Walters? Would you join us, please?" The door to the annex opened, and Corporal Walters stepped through. Elisabeth gasped, unable to hide her shock at what had happened to the young soldier. She had grown at least a foot in height, her skin was covered in fine green fur, and from her upper jaw protruded two needle-sharp canine teeth. Her mousy-brown hair had become almost a mane of long green tresses which were tied back with a simple elasticated band of fabric, and her eyes gleamed with liquid green light. A feline tail twitched and swayed behind her back.

"I don't understand," Elisabeth said, her voice almost a whisper. "How is this possible?"

"You see, Commissar," Doctor Pym began, "it seems that the presence, or absence, of testosterone is a crucial factor in the way the serum works. If I were to, let's say, lose my temper, I'd turn into one of those monsters as well, but if I were to inject you with the current version of the serum and the same thing happened to you, you would turn into a controlled hybrid like Corporal Walters. Therefore, it seems to me that either we create female-only battalions of super-solders, or we find a way to cancel out the effect testosterone has on the transformation."

"That's right," Corporal Walters agreed. "Right now I'm working on a way to duplicate the effect my DNA has on the serum."

Elisabeth raised an eyebrow, surprised. " _You're_  working on it? I thought you were just a volunteer?"

"Jennifer is a clever girl," Dr Pym said, smiling broadly. "Apparently her aptitudes at school included a firm grasp of chemistry and biology. I'd thought I needed a new lab assistant for a while now anyway, so she fit the bill rather nicely."

"The serum is a tough balancing act," Corporal Walters said, "but I think I can get everything more or less straightened out. We can start testing again when that happens. Until then it might be a good idea to keep what happened out there today our little secret."

"I know my responsibilities, girl," Elisabeth snapped, angry that her toes were being trod on so brazenly. "You can rest assured that not a word of this will get out to the troops. Any test subjects I find for you in the future will have no idea what happened to their predecessors. And you would do well to remember your place,  _Corporal_  Walters... show me such disrespect again, and you'll regret it. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes... yes, sir," Corporal Walters said, sounding suitably chastened.

Elisabeth smiled thinly. "Good. I'd hate to lose another good scientist today." Turning on her heel, she marched out of the lab's entrance, saying "Proceed, Doctor. I'll expect a progress report within the week." As she stepped into the corridor, she put her hand to her temple, feeling a telepathic message enter her brain. She listened to it intently, and her lip curled back in rage as she heard about the actions of the two traitors that she had tasked Lieutenant Frost to apprehend. Quickly, she told Lieutenant Frost to make her way to the nearest sick bay to get some treatment, and then switched her attention to her adjutant. _Lieutenant Wagner,_  she said.  _I need to deploy the Crimson Commando again. Has he already gone back into his hibernation chamber?_

 _No, sir,_  Lieutenant Wagner replied.  _He is a few hours away from being deactivated yet. I'll recall him as soon as possible and send him to your office._

 _Thank you, Lieutenant,_  Elisabeth said, feeling relieved that she would not have to go through the arduous process of thawing Clint Barton out again.  _Within the next fifteen minutes would be ideal._

_Yes, sir. Expect him there in ten._

_Excellent,_  Elisabeth said, flexing her fingers and cracking her knuckles one by one.  _Remind me to cite you for a decoration for efficiency, Lieutenant. I'll be in my office._  She cut the telepathic connection at that moment, and marched down the corridor towards the elevator, feeling satisfied that she had made her feelings on this matter even clearer. Perhaps with the execution of these two traitors in the near future, General von Doom's beyond-the-grave scheming would finally be over and done with. Until that time, however, she had to concern herself with other matters...

* * *

"Tony Stark's dead, Logan. I killed him myself." Kitty let Logan digest that statement for a moment, before she lit a cigarette, took a drag and exhaled a grey plume of smoke into the musty air of the rebel safe-house in New York. "Backstabbing fucker sold us out to the Russkies because we wouldn't let him bring his goddamn metal suit back to New York with us. I tried to explain that he'd be able to build another one when he got here, but he wouldn't listen. He escaped and switched sides just like  _that_." She snapped her fingers. "I didn't get it then, and I sure as hell don't get it now. I mean, he spends years building that thing to kill Ivans, and he throws that all away so he can join them? What the fuck kind of sense does that make?"

"Tony was a proud man," Jubilation said in a small voice, from behind Kitty's left shoulder.

"What's that, little darlin'?" Logan said, motioning for Jubilation to come closer. Kitty knew that he'd heard her just fine – he just wanted her to feel more confident around him. She'd seen him do it several times before with several new recruits, all of whom had become valued friends and resistance members. "What did you say?" Nervously, chewing her lip as if she was regretting having spoken at all, Jubilee edged towards the front of the group standing in front of the wooden table which formed the centrepiece of Logan's sewer-based command centre.

She took a deep breath. "The Iron Man suit was what kept him going, all the time he was looking after me. Kitty asked him to leave it behind." Kitty saw tears forming in the girl's eyes as she spoke, which Kitty really couldn't blame her for, and Jubilation's voice cracked a little as she said "Tony took care of me for eight years, ever since my parents got 'pacified' by the Ivans, and now he's gone. Where the fuck am I supposed to go now?"

Logan dropped his head onto his chest and rubbed at the inner corners of his eyes with the index finger and thumb of his right hand. "Damn it, Tony. Damn it," he said in a voice that was almost a whisper, before he raised his gaze back to Jubilation again. "It's okay, kid. We'll take care of you." Glancing over to a female rebel, he gestured to Jubilation with one hand. "Hey, Mel – find the kid a bed, would you?"

"Can do," the woman replied cheerfully, flipping her long crimson-streaked white hair over her shoulders and beckoning to Jubilation. "Come on, sweetheart; I'm sure we can make you as comfortable as we can. It's really quite nice down here... once you get past the smell, I mean. And I reckon we have some good chow on the go this way, too. Only I don't eat pork, so if you're looking for something that's not kosher, I'm afraid you're going to be disappointed..." She continued babbling cheerfully to Jubilation as the two of them went down a tunnel on the east side of the chamber, and Kitty felt relieved to see the younger girl breaking into a welcome smile for the first time since they had left San Francisco. If Jubilation was going to survive here, the first thing she would need was a sense of humour.

When Jubilation was out of earshot, Logan turned back to Kitty and said "Val should be back in an hour. I want you to tell her everything you just told me, and then I want you to take a couple of days to recover a little. Find a safehouse in Brooklyn or wherever and just rest up for a while – seems to me like you guys could use the rest."

"Thanks. I'll get right on it," Kitty replied. "But before I do that –"

"You have to go and check on your boyfriend," Logan said with a short burst of laughter. "Right. I hope Madrox knows what a lucky guy he is."

Kitty rolled her eyes, gave Logan a brief thumbs-up, and then walked down the nearest tunnel towards what passed for the hospital wing of the rebel base. As she entered the small chamber, she saw Madrox lying in the corner, with his legs and chest covered by a thin blanket and with a threadbare pillow underneath his head. "Hey, you," she said as she sat down next to him, kissing him gently on the mouth and slipping one of his hands into her own. "How are you doing?"

"Well, I don't feel like my insides are made of minced beef any more, so that's a plus, I guess," Madrox said, mustering a weak smile. "Remind me never to listen to you ever again, will you?"

"Oh, you just can't help yourself, sweetie," Kitty told him. "I'm just too cute for you to resist."

Madrox rolled his eyes. "You keep telling yourself that, Kit." He paused, his eyes lighting up with a remembered memory. "Say... when am I going to get that month of daily sex you promised me?"

"Damn. I was hoping you'd forgotten about that," Kitty said, snapping her fingers in mock-annoyance. "Maybe when you're all healed up – but don't count on it. Even I have my limits, you know."

"That's not what you used to say," Madrox said, winking.

"Oh, shut up, you idiot," Kitty retorted, before she leaned close and kissed him on the forehead, cheek and mouth, drawing him close to her as she did so, so close that she could almost feel his heart beating. "I'll be back to check on you later – I have to go and check something with Lorna. Logan said we could take a few days to recover, so it looks like we'll be spending a lot more time together."

"Can't wait," Madrox said. "I love you."

"I love you too," Kitty replied. "I'll see you soon."

* * *

Clint Barton stood respectfully at attention as he watched Commissar Braddock stand up behind her desk. "At ease, Mr Barton" she said, before gesturing to the chair in front of her. Clint pulled the chair out and then sat down, rocking the chair back onto its hind legs as he leaned back into it.

"So, sir, what can I do for you?" he said, deciding the direct approach was the best one. "Why am I not in deep freeze again?"

"I need you to erase some rogue soldiers for me," Commissar Braddock said, handing him a sealed envelope with  _Top Secret: Eyes Only_  stamped on it in large red letters. "They were following through on a plot to kill me left behind by General Doom, who I'm sure you're very familiar with, and have escaped justice. I need you to hunt them down and sanction them as quickly and efficiently as possible, since I suspect they will try again at some point. Even if they don't, treachery like that still needs to be stamped out." She pointed at the envelope in his hand. "That's all the information that you'll need. Lethal force is authorised, naturally."

"Thank you, sir," Clint said. "Anything else I should know?"

"No, Mr Barton," Commissar Braddock said. Then she stepped round her desk, pulled him up to his feet by his collar, and kissed him hard on the mouth before releasing him. "But consider that an incentive to come back in one piece, Crimson Commando. I'd hate to lose a good soldier..."


End file.
